24. Stony Landscape [1951.]

Frano Šimunović (Dicmo, 1908 – Zagreb, 1995) was a Croatian painter, best known as a landscape artist, the son of the famed Croatian writer Dinko Šimunović. After being dissatisfied with studying architecture, he enrolled into painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb where he was taught by Ljubo Babić and Jozo Kljaković. He was declared the best student of 1934, and received a scholarship for a nine-month stay in Spain as a reward. He held his first exhibition a year later in Zagreb. During this period, he drew inspiration from Van Gogh and painted the Dalmatian landscape in intense colors. The Second World War left its mark on Šimunović's art when he started creating drawings with a camp motif. A thematic return to his native land, the stone and karst, is visible in the works exhibited in 1952 at the “Kod Ullricha”. In later works, he purified and sublimated his palette and condensed geometric elements. He was married to sculptor Ksenija Kantoci and together they donated 51 works of art to the National Museum of Modern Art. In the 1950s, his most famous paintings emerged when he transferred the landscape of his native Zagora—rocky terrain and boulder fields—to the canvas. The oil on canvas "Stony Landscape" (1951) displays a bright stone landscape, with a horizontal composition. In this typical landscape, absent of human figures, hints of greenery—grass, bushes, and trees—persist. Šimunović has not yet ventured into the period of abstracting and total simplicity in landscape depiction, which climbs towards the top of the painting. Lighter colors, predominantly white and gray, predominate, even the sky is of a gray-blue color. The landscape is signed and dated in the bottom left corner.

Dimensions

width 92 cm, height 72.5 cm

Description

ulje na platnu, signed and dated bottom left, in red, "F. Šim, (19)51"

Dating

1951.

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