ANNOUNCEMENT: EXHIBITION DESPITE THE ENVIRONMENT

16 October 2018

Despite the Environment
Exhibition on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the HDLU and 80 years since the construction of the Home of HDLU
October 26, 2018 – December 2, 2018

Exhibition opening: Friday, October 26, 2018. at 8pm at the Home of HDLU

In 2018, HDLU, today’s largest and oldest art association, gathering over 1,900 art and multimedia artists from all over Croatia, will mark 150 years of existence, as well as the 80th anniversary of the construction of the Home of HDLU, as imagined by Ivan Meštrović, once also the President of the Association.

In marking these important jubilee anniversaries, HDLU issues a monograph 150 years of HDLU, organized lectures and round tables, and organizes a group exhibition. Curatorial concept Despite the Environment (written by esteemed art historian and curator Branko Franceschi) was chosen for the exhibition.

This 150th jubilee of HDLU activity is extremely important for the entire Croatian culture and art, because through history of HDLU, one can see the whole history of Croatian modern and contemporary art.

The exhibition consists of around 60 art works (loaned from various institutions throughout Croatia and private collections) done by members of HDLU, created throughout the history of the Association and in all types of media. The aim of the exhibition is to mark and promote the long-standing role of HDLU in the artistic, cultural and social life of Croatia; to present iconic works of art that shape recent Croatian art history; and to make a critical resume of artistic creativity in Croatia in the past 150 years.

Patrons of the program of marking the jubilee of HDLU activity are the President of the Republic of Croatia, Kolinda Grabar Kitarović and the Mayor of the City of Zagreb, Milan Bandić.

“(…)The presented works of art sublimate the time and context of their origin, so they anchored themselves in the collective or at least the subjective curator’s memory as the ideal image of the period of their emergence. These works have proved as an intriguing and inspiring reflection or a comment about the reference social reality, i.e., through their form or content they represented a deviation in relation to the promoted aesthetic and social values, and through superior examples constituted a foretoken of times yet to come. Their existence testifies about the pioneering role of artists in creating an image of their own time and articulating guidelines for the future. Starting with putting up “The History of Croats“ by Ivan Meštrović (1932) at the pavilion centre, i.e. the present Bačva Gallery, in remembrance of the first exhibition of the members of the Association at the Home of the Croatian Association of Artists, along with an inherent symbolism of exhibiting the sculpture, the other selected works will follow the circular architecture of the space and will ultimately fill it out in a kind of a visual paraphrase of a musical score.”

Branko Franceschi, curator of the exhibition

You can read more about the concept here.