A retrospective exhibition by Milivoj Uzelac

Until mid-January of next year, a retrospective exhibition by Milivoj Uzelac will be open at the Art Pavilion. More than 120 paintings and drawings, gathered from various museums and private collections, will be exhibited as an anthology of the artistic activity of one of the greatest Croatian painters of the 1920’s.

Until January 11, 2009, a retrospective exhibition by Milivoj Uzelac, one of the greatest Croatian painters of the 1920’s, will be open at the Art Pavilion. Among the numerous anthological works such as “The Venus of Suburbia”, “At a Bohemian’s Atelier”, “Rooster”, “Sphinx of a Metropolis” and “Three Gracious Ladies”, more than 120 paintings and drawings gathered from various Croatian and international museums and galleries, as well as private collections, will be exhibited. 

Milivoj Uzelac was born in 1897 in Mostar. He developed an interest in painting while he was a high-school student in Banja Luka where he was befriended by painter Vilko Gecan. Seeking a better life, his family moved to Zagreb in 1912, where Milivoj first attended Tomislav Krizman’s art school and, later, he was a member of Oton Iveković’s group at the Temporary High School of Arts and Crafts. During World War I he lived in Prague as a military fugitive, working in painter Jan Preisler’s atelier. It was in Prague where he formed the Group of Four with Vilko Gecan, Marijan Trepše and Vladimir Varlaj, and participated in all exhibitions of the Spring Salon in Zagreb. After the war ended he returned to Zagreb where he created some of his anthological works but, after that, in 1923, he moved to Paris. Only two years later, he organized his first independent exhibition in which his magnificent work attracted the attention of critics and the art public alike, gaining him a respectable social reputation.

The Modern Gallery in Zagreb has 99 of Uzelac’s works in its holdings, while much of the rest of his work is located in museums in Paris and Prague, as well as private collections worldwide. Some of the works from these collections will be shown to the public for the first time, thereby providing the viewers with a unique opportunity to grasp the magnitude of the artistic opus of an artist with a fascinating career, who included numerous erotic motifs in his art.

Milivoj Uzelac died in 1977 in Cotignac in France where he was buried.