A Visual Encounter with the Great Portraitist

An exhibition at the Modern Gallery in Zagreb featuring works by the great Croatian painter Josip Račić will mark the 100th anniversary of the painter’s premature death. During his short life, this well respected portraitist authored some anthology works and left an impressive artistic portfolio.

This autumn, the Modern Gallery launches an exhibition of works by the great Croatian painter Josip Račić to mark the 100th anniversary of his death. Although Josip Račić’s life ended prematurely in a tragic death, he had made his mark as one of the most significant Croatian painters who left us a very significant artistic opus.

Josip Račić was born in 1885 near Zagreb where he attended primary school and received his first lessons in drawing from Oton Iveković. Having completed two grades at a grammar school, he continued to attend the lithography stream at a crafts school, whilst at the same time he was following a painting and drawing course at the private school run by Bela Čikoš Sesija and Menci Klement Crnčić. After that, he went first to Vienna, and then to Munich, which at the time was one of the most important centers of culture in Europe. He enrolled at the Fine Arts Academy, together with the future prominent Croatian painters, Vladimir Becić, Miroslav Kraljević and Oskar Herman. Their group was known under a common name “The Kroatische Schule” (Croatian School).

Josip Račić made a name for himself as an excellent portraitist and is considered the founder of the Croatian Moderna (modern art movement). Some of his paintings depict scenes from Paris, where he moved to in 1908 and, sadly enough, in June that same year, took his own life. The Modern Gallery will show 33 of Josip Račić's oils, water colors and drawings from its own collection as well as a number of other works kept by other institutions.