oil on canvas, 43 x 34 cm, signed and dated lower right, in brown, "J. Račić 1908."

Josip Račić rose from humble beginnings in the suburban village of Horvati in Zagreb to become a pillar of Croatian modern art. After training as a lithographer in Zagreb, his relentless ambition took him to Vienna and then to Munich in 1904. He firstly studied at Anton Ažbe's private school before enrolling at the prestigious Munich Academy of Fine Arts at the end of 1905. At the Academy, Račić formed an elite group with colleagues, Croatian students Vladimir Becić, Miroslav Kraljević, and Oskar Herman. Known in history as the Munich Circle, they rebelled against rigid academic formulas. Deeply inspired by old masters such as Velázquez, Goya and Édouard Manet, Račić initiated the philosophy of pure painting. He rejected sharp contours, shaping forms exclusively through rich, velvety layers of pigment and complex changes of light. The last year of Račić's short life was a period of intense creative transition spent between Munich and Paris. In his studio work, he focused on powerful, introspective figure studies and portraits of anonymous models, using a dark, somber palette to create works of immense psychological depth. This specific "Female Portrait" from 1908 is an example of this phase, in which he used a richly textured, crimson background in contrast with deep, velvety tones, shaping the woman's face entirely through soft gradients of light. By moving to Paris, his style expanded to the open space, where he recorded the vivid, fluid energy of city parks, cafes, and bridges through light-filled watercolors and atmospheric oils. This brilliant artistic trajectory was abruptly ended in June 1908, when the twenty-three-year-old genius was found dead in a Parisian hotel room.

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