23. Child with a Ball [cca. 1965.]

Painter Miljenko Stančić, a native of Varaždin, is one of the key representatives of surrealist and metaphysical painting tendencies in Croatia. He was born as the second child of parents Valentin and Maria, seven years after their first son passed away at only six months old. The early revelation of his brother's premature death left a strong imprint on the painter, especially reflected in the frequent motifs of death and eerie scenes of children in his painting. After graduating high school in Varaždin, the painter moved to Zagreb and enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts, completing his postgraduate studies in graphics in 1949 in the class of Tomislav Krizman. Just three years later, he exhibited his works for the first time with painter Josip Vaništa, and in 1955, as a member of the "Group of Five," he presented his paintings at the Museum of Arts and Crafts. In the early sixties, he was chosen as an assistant professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, and soon published a book of reproductions of his works in his own edition with a preface by Miroslav Krleža. The Modern Gallery of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts organized a retrospective exhibition for him in 1970, reflecting two decades of his opus. In addition to painting, he worked in graphics, scenic design, and illustration for newspapers and magazines. His stylistic expression, influenced by European surrealism, metaphysical painting, and the psychoanalysis of the first half of the 20th century, developed from the outset as a distinctive painting perspective in which real, intimate, autobiographical, and fictitious elements were combined in an unusual way, creating a mystical and nostalgic ambiance. His work always exhibits a dreamy atmosphere achieved by recomposing motifs from real life, adding subtle effects of the fantastic, metaphysical, and surreal. Early in his career, he was deeply influenced by Baroque masters such as Johannes Vermeer and Georges de la Tour, and thus his early works are characterized by precision and careful toning, detailed description, and dramatic light effects. In the middle of his career, the painter from Varaždin began to experiment with fantastic transformations of human figures. Regardless, the constant motif of his artistic creation remains calm, motionless figures with doll-like physiognomies placed in interiors lit with unusual lighting effects. The painting presented here belongs to Stančić's cycle with scenes of children. The motif of a child continuously appears in his opus, almost always with the same character of a boy with a round face and closed eyes. In this painting, a boy with anonymous physiognomic characteristics is shown reaching for a ball. On his face, shown in motion following the ball, only an open mouth and nose are visible. The color scheme of the picture is dominated by just a few colors - beige, brown, and black. Childhood environments in Stančić's painting are inseparable from the tragedy of death, even when it comes to innocent play scenes. A sense of melancholy, certainly rooted in the painter's trauma from learning about his brother's premature death, permeates even works where death is not directly depicted.

References

ZIDIĆ, Igor. "Miljenko Stančić: (1929 - 1977.)", Matica hrvatska, Zagreb, 1979.

Dimensions

width 49.5 cm, height 57 cm

Description

oil on canvas, signed lower right, in white, "M. Stančić"

Research information

The work was included in the exhibition "Football in Croatian Painting", Museum of Modern Art, Dubrovnik, 2018.

Lot.notes

On the back, an old French exhibition label.

Dating

cca. 1965.

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