Beauty of the week: how naive art became a popular phenomenon in Croatia

They look like neat and detailed child’s drawings. The “naive” paintings framed in what has been called naive art are the work of people who devote themselves to painting without having gone through any academy. They are spontaneous or, as we say in some countries, empirical artists, who have no technical or theoretical knowledge. They are autodidacts whose relationship with the notion of art is strictly personal.

The naive name (from French naive“naive”) then applies to the production of artists strangers, enthusiasts who devote themselves to painting outside of their main occupations. For example, one of the first representatives of this current, the Frenchman Henry Rousseau (1844-1910), was called “Le Douanier”, since he earned his living collecting taxes on goods entering Paris.

It should be noted that the development of an identifiable individual style and poetic expressiveness are factors that will distinguish a naive painter from other amateur painters and sculptors, and from the self-taught artist in general. Although it is also called naive art, this naivety should not be considered in a pejorative way, but is linked to the search for simplicity to capture a sincere vision of the world free from artifice.

At first glance, these paintings are distinguished by bright, contrasting colors, unusual proportions and perspectives, with a certain lack of logic in form and space. The elements are placed in the foreground and the contours are very precisely defined. The painting has no chiaroscuro and is detailed and meticulous.

It is considered that the first record of the use of the word naive to designate “clumsy” pictorial representations is in a line of the poem At Cabaret-Vert, 5 p.m.French Arthur Rimbaud (“I contemplated the very naive subjects / Of the tapestry”; “I contemplated the very naive themes of the tapestry”). It was in France that, towards the end of the 19th century, an interest in painting with a certain lyricism and a certain “freshness” began to arise, thanks to artists such as Henry Rousseau. The customs officer (the customs officer) Rousseau, admired and recognized by other artists such as picasso, Kandinsky oh Gauguin, and whose works are now exhibited at the National Gallery in London and at the MOMA Museum in New York, is considered the creator of naive art. His paintings show peaceful scenes, without tensions, problems or violence.

It was also in France that the first exhibition of naïve art was organized, in 1928 in Paris. The participants were Rousseau himself, Andre Bauchant, Camille Bombois, Seraphine Louis there Louis Vivianecollectively called “the painters of the Sacred Heart”.

Shortly after, in the early 1930s, naive art becomes popular in Croatia, where it finds fertile ground among poor peasants. Before being artists, these peasants were first workers in the land and fields, or fishermen or plumbers or carpenters. They paint out of pure vocation, without knowledge of perspective or anatomy or art history, depicting life in the countryside in a poetic and romantic way.

These early groups of painters did not have access to canvas, so they began experimenting with different materials. They first tried painting on wood, but it was quickly abandoned: it absorbed too much paint and it was expensive. They decided that glass worked best, so they developed a very complicated technique to be able to paint on it. Unlike painting on canvas, painting on glass started with the details and was painted not on the top of the glass but on its back, so that the image was drawn upside down, as if seen in the reflection of a mirror. The paints were made up of layers upon layers and were left to dry in the sun.

Although naive art in Croatia was initially associated with the works of peasants and workers, over time some of them achieved some success and became professional artists. In the early 1930s, the Croatian painter Krsto Hegedusic (1901-1975) returned from his studies in Paris and founded the Hlebin School in the town of the same name. There he brought together a handful of self-taught artists and gave them the opportunity to develop as painters. Among them were Ivan Generalic (1914-1992), one of the most acclaimed in the world, Franjo Mraz (1910-1981) and Mirko Virius (1889-1943).

During the 1930s, social themes and a realistic treatment of rural scenes predominated. Later works show a more idealized landscape that owes more to imagination than observation. However, naïve art does not only reflect the positive aspects of life, and dark and tragic themes can also be found in the genre. The work of the second generation of artists from the Hlebine school, such as Ivan Vecenaj there Mijo Kovacic, dates from the 1950s and 1960s, and includes burlesque and grotesque figures, as well as works inspired by biblical themes, with a strong use of color. The painter Ivan Lacovicknown for his twilight scenes and his characteristic, melancholy elongated landscapes, is considered one of the most brilliant and notable draughtsmen of naive art.

An indication of the importance that this artistic current acquires in Croatia is that the city of Zagreb, capital of this country, houses the oldest museum dedicated to naive art in the world. On November 1, 1952, it was founded as the Peasant Art Gallery. In 1956 it was renamed Gallery of Primitive Art and was part of the Municipal Galleries of Zagreb (now Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb). Since 1994, according to a decision of the Croatian Parliament, its official name is Croatian Museum of Naive Art.

The Croatian Museum of Naive Art is located in the historic district of Gradec, next to the funicular that leads to the base of the Lotrscak tower. It is a small museum that houses more than 1,850 works of art, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, and graphic arts. There are works of more than fifteen classics of Croatian naive art from the famous Hlebine school and other independent authors. In the main room of the museum, the first works stand out, from the beginning of the 1930s, of Ivan Generalicthat focus on social issues (the requisition1934), as well as works of poetic realism, where the romantic atmosphere of the rural landscape is accentuated (cows in the forest1938, clippers, 1939). Alongside these works, there is also the self-portrait he painted in the 1970s, with a more modern approach.

the famous Ivan Generalic he was one of the first naive painters in Croatia to develop a distinctive creative style and achieve a high professional level in his art. Likewise, the stone sculptures of Torti from Lavoslavand wooden ones Petar Smajic these are the earliest examples of Croatian naive sculpture.

The work of Emerik Fejes (1904-1969) is an example of urban naïveté, with themes exclusively of urban scenes and architecture characterized by geometric composition and the vivid, expressive use of color. Matija Skurjeni (1898-1990), another distinguished artist, created fantastical works featuring lyrical landscapes with powerful distortions.

Currently, a group of peasants with a passion for painting produce giant Easter eggs in northern Croatia every year, more than two meters high, decorated with naive art scenes from rural life in the region.

The painters, all self-taught, exhibit their works every Easter in the central square of Koprivnica, about 100 kilometers from Zagreb. “We do it for fun. It’s a pleasure for us”, says one of the five painters who painted the giant eggs in the village of Molve, in a testimony collected by the agency ECE in 2018. “It is always a collective, united work. Four or five painter friends usually paint a gigantic egg, each a scene, a part,” he adds.

The eggs show images of rural life in this region, located near the Hungarian border in the valley of the Drava River, and include scenes of typical houses, the daily chores of local peasants, churches and river mills.

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