Today, May 19th, 2017 at 7 pm the Art Pavilion in Zagreb will open an exhibition dedicated to forests. The purpose of the exhibition is to showcase these beautiful Croatian natural resources through art and lectures that will accompany the exhibitions, underlining and emphasizing their value and importance.
The Forest is an exhibition of a multydisciplinary character created in cooperation with the Art Pavilion in Zagreb and the Croatian Wood Cluster, it’s concept includes painting, sculpturing, literature and product design from the 19th century to this day.
Numerous artists and writers have found their inspiration by interpreting motifes of forests in their line of work. One of the most important writers who dealt with this topic was Josip Kozarac, the leading representative of Croatian realism, who published his Slavonian forest in „Vijenac“ in 1888.
Many painters were also inspired by forests and trees. During the 19th and early 20th century, Hugo Conrad von Hötzendorf and Adolf Waldinger are the painters who mostly dealt with the notable landscape of Slavonian forests and gave the greatest contributions to the 19th-century landscape painting in Croatia. The motives of forests are also present in the works of Ivan Zasche, Ferdo Quiquerez, Vlaho Bukovas, Oton Iveković, Tomislav Krizman and much more.
To sculptors, forests and trees are a valuable raw material with which their work is made. There are many Croatian sculptors who worked and are working on wood sculptures – Ivan Meštrović, Ksenija Kantoci, Šime Vulas, Matko Mijić and more.
Likewise, trees, especially oak, are valuable raw materials from which furniture is made. The exhibition will show the development of industrial production and furniture design from the beginning of the 20th century to the modernity. Among the exhibits, there will be wooden furniture products.
The work of all these authors and much more will be exhibited at this unique exhibition. Altogether there will be about 140 exhibits – paintings, sculptures, and furniture – from about a dozen Croatian museums and a large number of private collections.
Art Pavilion in Zagreb – “Forest” will be opened from May 19th until July 16th.
