23. Soul [1979.]

This Keser's drawing was exhibited at the Middlesbrough Art Gallery at the fourth International Biennale of Drawing in Cleveland, UK, 1979. Zlatko Keser is a doyen of Croatian abstract visual arts of extremely vital and fruitful creativity, which has been reaping the most prominent awards for drawing, painting and graphic works executed in a very wide range of visual techniques for decades. Let us mention at least the most relevant ones: Painting Award at the 6th and 8th Salon of Youth (1973 and 1978), Grand Prix at the 16th Zagreb Salon for the triptych Apocalyptic Images of the World (1981), at the Zagreb Drawing Exhibitions two Purchasing Awards (1985 and 1989), Vladimir Nazor Annual Award for drawing exhibition from the series Faces (2000), HAZU Prize at the fourth Croatian Drawing Triennial (2008) and the Vladimir Nazor Lifetime Achievement Award 2016. Keser paints and draws imaginatively and delicately playful abstract and semi-figurative compositions with a surrealistic sign in which he constantly testifies to the luxury of his creative and intellectual habitus. His entire creative opus is based on persistent questioning of his inner self and the deepest experiences of human life - from the first, pre-civilization times until today. Often coloristically dense and always draft richly with many associative symbols and signs. Each of his works is characterized by both the refinement of the procedure and the contemporary dynamics of matter. In the need to always go further and create better, writes Jasmina Bavoljak in the preface to the painter's fascinating exhibition in GKD held in 2020, he changes, investigates and examines, as much as it decomposes the image, so his search for the perfect image and gives birth to it. On the permanent ecstasy of Keser's creative intuition and lucidity, testifies the early drawing from the cycle "Anima" exhibited here. It is a work of minimalist chromatic vitalism and the most subtle lines that simultaneously meditatively and sensibly mirrors the intimacy and mood of the painter's spiritual being. Of course, from the image of Anima in 1974 until today, his moods and spiritual impulses have changed, so his opus is teeming with large canvases of intense colorism and gestural brush strokes. However, despite possible classifications of his paintings into one of the postmodern "isms", it should be emphasized that Keser comes from nowhere and does not follow anyone, that he is always his own and at the beginning of a new transformation. (J. Bavoljak). The creativity of Zlatko Keser undoubtedly has one of the most special positions within contemporary Croatian visual art as a whole. BRP

Dimensions

width 62.5 cm, height 50 cm

Description

pencil, colored pencil and ink on paper, signed and dated in the middle bottom, in black, "Keser 1979."

Dating

1979.

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