oil on canvas, 65 x 80 cm, signed on the back upper right, in black, "M Stančić"

Miljenko Stančić (1926-1977) was a prominent Croatian painter and graphic artist, a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, and one of the main initiators of poetic surrealism and magical realism in modern Croatian art. In his series from the late 1960s and early 1970s, he made a significant reversal in the portrayal of children, moving away from the more realistic street scenes of the earlier phase to an emphatically surreal, dreamlike style. In this period, Stančić strips the backgrounds of his paintings and isolates figures in empty, abstract spaces. Children no longer stand on the ground, but float and levitate in the air, defying the laws of gravity. Instead of warmer tones, his palette becomes more muted, with a dominance of smoky whites, pale yellows, and monochromatic shades of grey, giving the child figures an alabaster or statue-like appearance. Instead of playful interaction, these works foreground stillness and psychological isolation, transforming children into symbols of memory, vulnerability, and lost time.

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