Events

In addition to the concert of the Cantus Ensemble at the Vatroslav Lisinski Concert Hall, for one evening the graphics of Julije Knifer, one of the greatest Croatian artists of the 20th century, will be exhibited at the concert hall foyer.

 

The connection between Julije Knifer and the Music Biennale Zagreb goes back to the very beginnings of this important event. As a wellspring of contemporary tendencies, the Biennale attracted an audience that was not tied solely to music. Founded by Milko Kelemen, the first edition of the Music Biennale Zagreb was held in 1961, just a few months before the first exhibition of the New Tendencies, the most important contemporary art event in the region bringing together international contemporary artists, including Knifer. Kelemen and Knifer knew each other and socialised, among other things, because Milko’s younger brother Boris was an art historian who worked at the Gallery of Contemporary Art, which organised New Tendencies. This period is often regarded as the halcyon days of Zagreb’s culture. 

 

Music played a very important role for Knifer. As early as the 1950s, he became acquainted with the work of composer Igor Stravinsky, who affected the future course of Knifer’s work and research. “Stravinsky once wrote that music is nothing but rhythm. I thought to myself, why shouldn’t the things I do rely only on rhythm too. I started exploring in horizontal and vertical directions, as well as the rhythms of depth. In a word, I started producing rhythm. The horizontal and the vertical, the black and the white, were to me the ultimate rhythms”, Knifer wrote in the 1970s. 

 

Although he created visual art, he describes his work using musical terminology. Rhythm, tempo, pause. He explained that he wanted to achieve in his works what Stravinsky or Cage did through music. In 1963, Stravinsky visited Zagreb as a guest of the Biennale. However, this is not the only connection between Knifer and the Biennale. John Cage, another artist whom Knifer considered close and shared certain features with, came to Zagreb in 1985. It is precisely because of John Cage that we have chosen for this exhibition a series of sketches from the late 1980s reminiscent of Cage’s scores. These are sketches on A4 paper with templates for large-scale pictures, as well as extensive mathematical calculations that preceded the finalisation of the work.

 

Two acrylics on canvas paintings from 2003 are an example of Knifer’s obsession with the positive and the negative, as well as with the sequencing of surfaces and forms. The series of eight graphite drawings from the early 1990s, on display at the exhibition, is a monotonous series with extremely reduced forms, which the Zagreb audience have a chance to see for the first time.

 

A contemporary Croatian artist, Julije Knifer was born in 1924 in Osijek and died in Paris in 2004. The signature element spanning his fifty-year long career features the recognisable motif of the meander, and, apart from a brief exception, working almost exclusively with black and white colours. His expression found form in various techniques which he perfected in order to achieve a desired effect, at this exhibition displayed in a series of eight graffiti. His writings developed in parallel to his artistic expression.

From the outset of his career, he started exhibiting abroad, moving to Germany in the 1970s, and later to France in the 1990s. His works are included in the most important collections of contemporary art, such as MOMA in New York, Centre Georges Pompidou, TATE Modern in London, as well as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb.