gouache on paper, 69 x 47.5 cm, signed and dated at the bottom right, in black, "Murtić (19)74"

Research information

The work is a gouache study for a large oil composition by Edo Murtic from 1974.

Edo Murtić was born in Velika Pisanica in 1921 and died in Zagreb in 2005. He studied painting with Petar Dobrović in Belgrade from 1940 to 1941, and he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb until 1943. He was a member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 1943, he joined the People's Liberation Struggle, where, together with Zlatko Prica, he organized the first partisan lithographic print shop in Topusko in 1944. There, together with Prica, he printed the graphics folder Jama, with a poem by I. G. Kovačić. After the war, he perfected his skills in Paris and New York, introducing the experience of gestural abstraction into Yugoslav art. Initially, he was still faithful to reality representation (from partisan experiences to views of New York), but from the late 1950s, he turned to abstraction. The main feature of his creativity was rhythm achieved by skilful handling of intense coloristic values. This is where one can see how the key influence on Murtić's opus was his year of studying with Petar Dobrović. In the 60s, for a brief period, he almost completely rejected color and mostly painted in dark, brown tones, influenced by international informel, only to brighten his palette again later. Edo Murtić's expression alternated between abstract and representational work. He often painted Mediterranean motifs in a coloristic style and with free strokes. Over the years, his abstraction became bolder and more relaxed, his gestures wider, his compositions more monumental, and black color was often used as a static element of the composition, highlighted by coloristic accents. This watercolor represents everything that has made Murtić a name synonymous with Croatian abstraction. The simple composition emphasizes the blue shape on a purple background, dynamized by coloristic accents and shorter linear movements. The black strokes in broken lines through the center of the composition here too serve as its keystone, holding its firmness (despite numerous lines, playful in all directions), and highlighting the coloristic expression and visual dynamism of the central shape. (F.G.)

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