42. Rainy Landscape [1956.]

Ljubo Ivančić is one of the most pronounced representatives of urban, existential angst in Croatian painting. He began his painting career in the years following the Second World War, when existentialist worldviews, questioning the possibilities of human action in the world, were gaining more and more momentum on the intellectual scene of Europe. In painting, the echo of these thoughts was informal - a style that emphasizes matter, color, stroke, without the desire to mimic the real world or to construct an aesthetically classical and rational world within the image. Ljubo Ivančić (born in Split in 1925), graduated in painting from the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts in 1949. Throughout his creative work, the motifs he paints will be related to the contemplation of human existence - he depicted rainy streets, lonely figures, still lifes filled with the anxiety of life, a painter in the studio and broken acts, all in a very rich matter that gives the images an expressive charge. He died in Zagreb in 2003. This painting depicts one of Ivančić's frequent motifs - rain on the street. Through the dark base, a greenish and blue underpainting breaks out, reminding us of Ivančić's slightly later, completely abstract works in which he portrays impressions of atmospheric phenomena (such as the painting Sky and Earth, from 1959, in the Art Gallery Dubrovnik). However, the scene here is completely readable. The street is precisely, geometrically articulated with straight lines suggesting an emphasized perspective construction of space. Regular on the painting are ovals (cypress trees, very common with this painter) and a small black circle, which, in comparison with numerous other Ivančić's rain scenes, we can read as a figure with an umbrella, viewed from behind. In this regular stylization of the world, colors and traces of paint, which create an ambiance of a rainy day, provide a counterbalance to the entire composition. It seems that the natural element of rain and the impression it gives to things is stronger than all human, rational attempts to give meaning to space. Such, material or expressive, slips out of the form that represents part of reality or a human figure, are characteristic for the opus of Ljubo Ivančić. One could even say, that throughout his entire opus he depicted a constant tension between individual human consciousness, which gives meaning to reality but distorts it at the same time, and the world in which this consciousness survives. FG

Dimensions

width 101.5 cm, height 78.5 cm

Description

oil on hardboard, signed top right, in black, "IVANČIĆ"

Research information

The work was exhibited at the monographic exhibition "Ljubo Ivančić", Modern Gallery, Zagreb, 1980., reproduced on page 30 of the exhibition catalog under the title "Rainy Landscape", logged on page 134., cat. No. 39. The work was exhibited at the exhibition "Veduta in Modern Croatian Painting", Art Gallery, Dubrovnik, 1981. The work was reproduced in "Art Encyclopedia of Yugoslavia" vol. 1, 1984., on page 654. The work is mentioned in the online edition of the Croatian Encyclopedia under the name "Rainy Landscape, 1956." (Ivančić, Ljubo. Croatian Encyclopedia, online edition, Miroslav Krleža Lexicographic Institute, 2013.–2025.).

Lot.notes

On the back a sticker about the exhibition in Belgrade and in the Modern Gallery in Ljubljana

Dating

1956.

PROVENANCE

acquisition directly from the artist at the retrospective exhibition "Ljubo Ivančić" 1960.

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