Finder of miraculous

After the exhibition "Not a dream, just an experience" with Art Brut works from the Infeld Collection in summer 2022 at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MSU) in Zagreb, this year exceptional Croatian artists will be presented at the Infeld Haus der Kultur in Halbturn. Art works from the Infeld Collection complete the exhibition. 

For the first time in Austria, the exhibition "Finder of miraculous” (“Wunderfinder") provides a representative insight into the impressive diversity of the outstanding Art Brut and Outsider Art collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. Approximately 50 works on canvas, paper and wood by 17 artists invite discussion of social conditions and art historical concepts. The works were created in the last 40 years.

Influenced by their own life experiences, the authors deal with the existential questions of human existence: fate and suffering, delusion and inspiration, love and creative power. One of them is the self-taught Melita Kraus. She graduated from the Faculty of Political Sciences in Zagreb, paints and writes since the 1990s. Her work is like an open book that tells, reveals or partially hides her dreamed life in order to offer free space for the viewer's imagination. The artist reveals about herself: "I live in a fairy tale."

Vivid colors and refined drawing set apart the works of Kresimir Hlup. Created as a document for his mental states, his work reveals impressions of the outside world, emotions and dreams, tells of the threat to man in a modern world inexorably afflicted by disease, wars, violence, and the loneliness and alienation of the individual.

Another self-taught artist, chemical engineer Petar Brajkovic creates instinctively, quickly, without sketching first. Initially inspired by cubism, he soon developed his own distinctive signature. "For me, painting is vital," says Brajkovic. The figure of a woman served as inspiration.

Fisherman Bozidar Golub-Stef frames his images in wires, pipes, metal and wood. He deals with the world threatened by war and destruction of all kinds. His works radiate a magical power, an energy that affects the viewer and invites him to ask and answer existential ques-tions.

"The exhibited works are characterized by their instinctive and spontaneous artistic expres-sion. The artists create spontaneously, unencumbered by academic conventions and express their need for personal freedom maximally. They open the door to a new approach and understanding of art," writes Daniela Bilopavlovic Bedenik. She has been responsible for the collection, which today comprises 600 works, since 2016. Art Brut and Outsider Art became visible to the public in Croatia in the 1990s. Nada Vrkljan Krizic (1940-2012), curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, was the first to draw attention to this outstanding nonacademic art.