57. Boulders [1986.-1989.]

Drywalls, or stone walls separating plots of arable land brought into an infertile rocky landscape, are a cult motif of the Croatian painter Oton Gliha (1914 – 1999), which we also see in this painting. Gliha's drywalls are, most often, a painted field in which we witness a dynamic, syncopated rhythm, achieved by skillfully connecting coloristic accents and darker base colors. The author uses a series of post-war modernism procedures - Informel, Tachisme, sometimes even Action painting, mainly methods of creation that insist on the expression of painterly matter. Thanks to this expression, Gliha's artistic sign can also be read as a symbol - a symbol of man's struggle for survival in a landscape that does not support human life. The peasants outwit nature, and the painter grapples with composition. In this painting of drywall, Gliha achieved his dense and repetitive rhythm with accents of blue, here and there also of yellow color in marked diamond grid. The matter of this painting speaks to us very loudly - with strong impastos and short strokes, and intense coloristic highlights emphasize the language of the painting itself, leading us from usual landscape associations to understanding Gliha's work as a metaphor of the painting form itself. FG

Dimensions

width 100 cm, height 70 cm

Description

oil on canvas, signed lower right, in black, "O.GLIHA"

Dating

1986.-1989.

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