A Legendary Croatian Painter

A great retrospective exhibition of works by Josip Račić is currently open at the Modern Gallery until March 15th. It presents the entire opus of one of the greatest painters of the Croatian Moderna (modern art movement). This exhibition is accompanied by a display of works by great painters such as Velasquez, Rubens, Van Dyck, Manet and Liebl.

A retrospective exhibition of the work by Josip Račić, one of the greatest painters of the Croatian modern art movement, will remain open at the Modern Gallery until March 15th. This is the largest ever single exhibition of works by the artist who created a magnificent opus in just a decade. Josip Račić was born in 1885 in Horvati, nowadays a western suburb of Zagreb, and he met his tragic fate in Paris in 1908. He studied at the Munich academy, in the class of renowned German painter Hugo von Habberman, along with other great Croatian painters, namely Miroslav Kraljević, Vladimir Becić and Oton Herman. Together, they constituted the Munich Quartet known in local art circles as the “Croatian School of Painting”.
The large retrospective exhibition, opened on the hundredth anniversary of Josip Račić’s death, covers the entire opus of this extraordinarily-talented artist who, in only 23 years of life, painted a series of masterpieces. Besides his anthological paintings such as the Self Portrait, Mother and Child, The Lady in White, Sister Josephine, and the Paris motifs, the public will also be able to see the artist’s less-known works. More than a hundred oil and watercolor paintings, as well as drawings, have been gathered from various other museums and private collections to create this exhibition at the Modern Gallery. With 33 oils and watercolors from all periods of his creative opus, this constitutes the largest single collection of Račić’s work. This exhibition is accompanied by a display of works by great painters such as Velasquez, Rubens, Van Dyck, Manet and Leibl, all of whom influenced Račić, from the collection of the Mimara museum.