Tomislav Krizman's Printmaking Anthology
/ From the Holdings of the Department of Prints and Drawings of the CASAIn the year marking the 140th birthday of Tomislav Krizman (1882-1995), the Department of Prints and Drawings of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts has set to present the artist’s prints kept in the institution for decades. A virtual exhibition of Tomislav Krizman’s anthological pieces is an homage to the artist’s committed efforts to elevate graphic art to the level of an independent discipline inside the body of Croatian modern art. His first retrospective exhibition was curated by Slavko Batušić in 1954 in Zagreb and Ljubljana. A monographic exhibition curated by Smiljka Domac-Ceraj followed, held in 1995 in the Art Pavilion in honour of the 40 th anniversary of Tomislav Krizman’s death, which systematically presented a selection from Krizman’s entire oeuvre (prints, paintings, set design, applied art and design). The printing heritage from the holdings of the Department of Prints and Drawings was presented at an exhibition in 2007 celebrating Krizman’s 125 th birthday, accompanied by an exhibition catalogue[1]. Following in the footsteps of Crnčić and guided by his own motto – “a printmaker should think and feel in copper, stone and wood” (T. Krizman, 1952: 8), he established high standards in Croatian printmaking art and contributed to a better valorisation and popularisation of the print medium.
In the year marking the 140 th birthday of Tomislav Krizman (1882-1995), the Department of Prints and Drawings of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts has set to present the artist’s prints kept in the institution for decades. A virtual exhibition of Tomislav Krizman’s anthological pieces is an homage to the artist’s committed efforts to elevate graphic art to the level of an independent discipline inside the body of Croatian modern art. His first retrospective exhibition was curated by Slavko Batušić in 1954 in Zagreb and Ljubljana. A monographic exhibition curated by Smiljka Domac-Ceraj followed, held in 1995 in the Art Pavilion in honour of the 40 th anniversary of Tomislav Krizman’s death, which systematically presented a selection from Krizman’s entire oeuvre (prints, paintings, set design, applied art and design). The printing heritage from the holdings of the Department of Prints and Drawings was presented at an exhibition in 2007 celebrating Krizman’s 125 th birthday, accompanied by an exhibition catalogue[1]. Following in the footsteps of Crnčić and guided by his own motto – “a printmaker should think and feel in copper, stone and wood” (T. Krizman, 1952: 8), he established high standards in Croatian printmaking art and contributed to a better valorisation and popularisation of the print medium.
Somewhere in between Crnčić’s impeccable graphic expression and Babić’s unstoppable modern notions[2], Tomislav Krizman played a key role in the generation shift period,[3] bridging the style gap between academic and modernist stylistic-morphological sphere.
[1] Pepelko, Ružica (2007), “Grafička ostavština Tomislava Krizmana”, in: exhibition catalogue Tomislav Krizman / iz fundusa Kabineta grafike HAZU, Department of Prints and Drawings of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb, pp. 4-7, 69-79.
[2] In poster and illustration art Gamulin categorises him between Rački and Babić (see Gamulin, Grgo (1995), “Tomislav Krizman”, Hrvatsko slikarstvo na prijelazu iz XIX. u XX. stoljeće, vol. 2, Naprijed, Zagreb, pp. 207, 213).
[3] The years of Art Nouveau influx from Vienna, the period from 2897, when Vereinigung bildender Künstler Österreichs separated from Künstlergenossenschaft, coinciding with the ‘emancipation’ of Zagreb’s Croatian Artists Association from the Croatian Art Society (see Maleković, Vladimir (1999), Stilovi i tendencije u hrvatskoj umjetnosti XX. stoljeća, Art studio Azinović, Zagreb, p. 9).
