112. Dorian Gray

During 1919 and 1920, Vladimir Kirin stayed in London, where he studied graphic techniques and worked as a collaborator in several graphic studios, mostly in the "Langham" studio. In addition, he worked as a permanent illustrator of novels and stories for The Studio magazine. He spent his free time visiting poor working-class neighborhoods in London and the post-Victorian crisis-ravaged docks along the Thames. The black-gray reality of lifeless cranes and unemployed workers are the central theme of his London oil paintings, drawings, and lithographs. Notoriously industrious and communicative, and exceptionally potent in drawing, in 1921 in London, Kirin received an order to visually accompany the "Fantastic Stories of Edgar Allan Poe" and the reprint of the novel (first version of the novel) "Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde for the mentioned magazine. It was Kirin's first encounter with the wondrous protagonists of surreal stories from two writers that would find themselves on his drawing board and easel a few more times after returning to Zagreb. For example, in 1955 when he illustrated six "fantastic" E.A. Poe stories collected in a book by the publisher Ex Libris Verlag AG from Zurich. The oil painting "Dorian Gray", previously unknown to the public, belongs to the London part of the painter's oeuvre and is a valuable contribution to the recognition that Kirin was not only a passionate portraitist of architectural heritage, but also a visual artist with a unique sense for literature, especially symbolic, surreal and fairytale, which he endowed with his own imagination and creative nerve through his drawings and even oil paintings. BRP

Dimensions

width 53.5 cm, height 65.5 cm

Description

oil on canvas, signed lower left, in yellow, "Kirin"

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