An exhibition by Ivan Kožarić: “Across the Line”

Until August 21st, the Museum of Contemporary Art will feature the exhibition, “Across the Line”, which consists of more than 400 works by Ivan Kožarić. As one of the country’s most significant artists, Ivan Kožarić has strongly influenced numerous generations of Croatian artists.

 Until August 21st, the Museum of Contemporary Art will feature an exhibition, “Across the Line” by Ivan Kožarić, a prolific artist who has strongly influenced numerous generations of Croatian artists. The exhibition was opened on his 90th birthday, and it consists of more than 400 works on paper as well as other surfaces. These works are an integral part of the permanent exhibit “Collections in Motion”, which the author donated, for permanent safekeeping, to the Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2007, the City Office for Education, Culture and Sport bought Kožarić’s entire collection of over six thousand works, part of which has never been seen in public.

Nowadays, Ivan Kožarić is regarded as one of the most significant artists in Croatia. He graduated from the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts in 1947, and completed his specialization with the renowned Croatian sculptor, Antun Augustinčić. He began exhibiting his works in 1953; since 1955, he has been organizing independent exhibitions. Although he spent a period of his professional life in Paris, and had great opportunities to stay there, he returned to Zagreb where, in the early 1960s, with other known Croatian painters and conceptual artists, he worked as part of the informal group, Gorgona. To this day, Ivan Kožarić has organized around a hundred independent exhibitions, and has participated in some two hundred group and themed exhibitions; he is also represented in numerous European and global collections of contemporary art.

Aside from numerous local and national events in which he actively participated, Ivan Kožarić was also a wholehearted supporter for the construction of the new Museum of Contemporary Art building, which opened in late 2009.