The exhibition "Ante Mandarić - spaces of artistic search" will open Tuesday, June 21, 2022 at 8 pm, at the Emanuel Vidović Gallery on Poljana Kraljice Jelene 4 in Split.
The exhibition, open to visitors from June 21 to August 21, 2022, is produced by the Split City Museum (with Ms. Branka Brekalo as its acting director), and authored by Dalibor Prančević, associate professor at the Faculty's Department of Art History, and curated by Nela Žižić, SCM advisor .
Ante Mandarić was born in Knin in 1948. His artistic sensibilities were formed at the School of Applied Arts, Department of Sculpture. He became active as an artist in the local circles in 1977: after participating in a number of group exhibitions, in 1979 he organized his first solo exhibition at the HDLUS Gallery, or Salon "Galić". "From then until the end of his life, in 2016, he remained an active protagonist of the city's artistic life, intriguing the audience with frequent changes in his own artistic mood and expression. His style ranged from the existentialist dark phase of saturated paintings, to drawings with luminous layers and lazure applications of watercolor paints, as well as constructively painted compositions. There is also a separate chapter on the sculptural work of Ante Mandarić; his works vary in their morphology from the synthetic volumes of female nudes, through the extremely intimate and miniature heads of known and unknown artists of Mandarić's day, to the unusual facial constructions of an undeniably important colored layer. ”(Dr Dalibor Prančević)
The author of the exhibition Dalibor Prančević chose 88 paintings, drawings and sculptures for this first posthumous exhibition of Ante Mandarić, to present the artist's oeuvre from 1977 to 2007. The exhibition is not based on a precise chronological sequence, but "on the meeting and dialogue of different segments of his works, with a common theme, impression or similarity (or lack thereof) in aesthetic. ” (Dr Dalibor Prančević)