Menci Clement Crnčić

With a selection of vistas from the opus of the painter, graphic artist and draftsman Menci Clement Crnčić (1865 – 1930) kept in the 20 ^th and 21 ^st Century Collection of the Department of Prints and Drawings, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, we mark this academician’s 160 ^th birthday, primarily with his professional significance as our first ever trained graphic artist of the Viennese academic circle, i.e. a professor who passed on his acquired knowledge in graphic arts to generations of his students – who, in turn, continued the process of popularising the printmaking medium in cultural public life.

We are also celebrating the 130 ^th anniversary of the important Croatian National Art Exhibition in the Courtyard of the Academy Palace in Zagreb (1984-1895) which, in addition to Crnčić, presented the protagonists of the first generation of Croatian modern artists: Vlaho Bukovac, Robert Auer, Nikola Mašić, Oton Iveković, Ferdo Kovačević, Ivan Tišov, Artur Oskar Alexander and others.

The virtual exhibition of vistas from today’s interpretative discourse is, in addition to the anniversary, a repeated form of requisitioning primarily his mastery reflected in both the printmaking and the drawing expression. The exhibition concept highlights the artist’s three graphic/drawing creative stages, ranging in terms of style and morphology from the late 19 ^th century symbolist predilections, to the 1900s’ vistas of Zagreb, to the seaside vistas of the 1920s. A careful selection of the finest landscape works presents an anthological segment of the valuable museum materials and cultural heritage kept in our holdings, this time in a virtual format.