62. Red Dress

Miljenko Stančić is a painter of tonal subtlety and surreal tendencies. He was born in Varaždin in 1926. He graduated from the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts, where he later worked as a professor. At first glance, due to his insistence on the classical painting technique, refined tonal construction of a scene, baroque chiaroscuro, as well as narrative in his paintings, it could be said that Stancic's oeuvre is separate from the mainstream Croatian modernism in the years after the Second World War, driven by abstraction and minimalism. However, Stancic's forms are also reduced, but here we do not see a reduction to the bare art element, but the forms he paints are in the service of creating images of a figurative and often surreal composition. He died in Zagreb in 1977. One of Stančić's interpreters was Miroslav Krleža, who recognized in his painting attempts to dive into the depths of human psychology, as well as a certain sentimentality of his "moods", or atmospheres of the interiors he painted. All of this exists in this painting. Tonal bravura and form reduction and a figurative depiction done in the specific manner of this painter. We recognize it in the elongated arms of the model, in the face of individual traits, but at the same time stylized and reduced almost to a mask and in the (almost baroque) contrast between the red color of the dress and the dark background of the painting. There is even a panorama of Zagreb, a hometown element, often present in Stančić's work. However, this portrait is important not only for Stancic's oeuvre, as his characteristic and very successful achievement, but also as an example of a portrait after the Second World War. Indeed, with the birth of abstraction in Croatian painting and its takeover of dominance in Croatian visual art, the portrait genre was no longer as widespread as in the pre-war period. But that does not mean it did not exist. This painting is certainly in the yet unwritten history of the Croatian post-war modernism portrait, due to the style and skill characteristic of Miljenko Stančić.

Dimensions

width 65 cm, height 81 cm

Description

oil on canvas, signed lower right, in black, "M Stančić"

PROVENANCE

The work depicts Bojana Nathorst-Böös (born Miholić), a commission from the author.

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