Miroslav Kraljević’s Diary of Paris

Introduction

With the exhibition of selected works by Miroslav Kraljević from the 20 ^th and 21 ^st Century Collection we are paying tribute to his exceptional work and the impact he made on the rising modernist trends which proliferated across the Croatian art thanks to the ‘Munich circle’ (Račić, Kraljević, Herman, Becić) and Paris. Diverse stylistic trends of Croatian modernist art owe their liberation from the late 19th century academism mostly to Miroslav Kraljević and Josip Račić, who built the achievements of French art into the foundations of the national modernist body. Without these two exceptional artistic personas, who also share the fate of premature death, the national artistic pulsations of the early 20th century would not be as propulsive and would not shape and define the stylistic visages of Croatian art, which – from realism, to Art Nouveau, to impressionism – blended into the trends that engendered the achievements of the Spring Salon and expressionism.

Paying homage to Miroslav Kraljević’s artistic prowess, which is, in addition to painting, also reflected in drawings and prints, we are presenting a selection of representative drawings and prints kept in the 20 ^th and 21 ^st Century Collection. An extremely valuable and numerous drawing oeuvre kept in the Department of Prints and Drawings entered the museum’s holdings by means of an acquisition from collector Edo Ullrich, the son of the famous Zagreb gallerist Antun Ullrich, whose exhibition salon hosted the first and in his lifetime only solo exhibition of Miroslav Kraljević in 1912. The exhibition of acquired drawings and prints was mounted in 1985 at the Department of Prints and Drawings by Renata Gotthardi-Škiljan at the occasion of Miroslav Kraljević’s 100 ^th birthday. The same year saw the issuing of the art book Miroslav Kraljević, penned by academician Vera Horvat Pintarić. Another publication to remember is the first ever art book about Kraljević’s works by Artur Schneider, published in 1918, still a relevant source for interpretative discourse.

Forty whole years after the mentioned exhibition (1985), we are presenting a selection of works from Kraljević’s drawing and print work, which encompasses over 300 pieces – exhibiting those that have been, over the course of many researches and segmented presentations in the meantime, filtered by art historian valorisation and emerged as a selection of anthological character.

Ružica Pepelko