VASKO LIPOVAC RETROSPECTIVE Joy of life and gentle erotica of one of the greatest interpreters of the Mediterranean
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SUMMARY
An article by Patricia Kiš published in Jutarnji list on the occasion of the major retrospective exhibition of Vasko Lipovac at the Klovićevi dvori Gallery in 2017. The text provides in-depth insight into the artist’s work, from early explorations in geometric abstraction and art informel, through his time in Krsto Hegedušić’s master workshop, to his recognizable figures of sailors, widows, and athletes. The author highlights Lipovac’s ability to convey pure joy of living through “gentle erotica” and recognizable Mediterranean motifs, while also noting the solitude of his characters.
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VASKO LIPOVAC RETROSPECTIVE Joy of life and gentle erotica of one of the greatest interpreters of the Mediterranean
Written by: Patricia Kiš Published: September 13, 2017, 22:22 (Jutarnji list)
“My works are gentle erotica. Erotica is something that interests a person, if they are normal, when they are young, and at 75, and at 85.”
Vasko Lipovac interpreted his works very precisely. The audience recognized the joy of living in his work, and he would respond: “I never had a conscious intention to bring humor or irony into my works, but life is like that. Although my characters are often lonely and very often sad, one feels the joy of life in them. And erotica is always an important driver, it carries you precisely through unexpected details, through some atmospheres that are difficult to read until one steps into the world of motifs.”
Vasko Lipovac passed away in the summer of 2006, at the age of 76.
In the meantime, his work has been contextualized, either through thematic exhibitions of artworks cared for by his heirs, three sons, Mario, Marko, and Ranko, or through a more extensive exhibition dedicated to him late last year at the Miodrag Dado Đurić Gallery in Cetinje. An exhibition of early works in Split, also held last year, was interesting, where Zvonko Maković recognized the foundations for Lipovac’s later creativity, or rather Lipovac’s first significant work, in the stained glass “Woman with a Cat” from the mid-fifties, 1955. However, there was no retrospective of his.
Eleven years after the artist’s death, a large retrospective of Vasko Lipovac opens at the Klovićevi dvori Gallery on September 14, which will last until January 9.
Artist’s Explorations
The author of the exhibition is Zvonko Maković, and the curator is Ana Medić. Lipovac was a prolific author, leaving behind a multitude of works, and for the exhibition spanning two floors, slightly more than two hundred of them were selected - sculptures, paintings, prints, drawings, reliefs, installations, intimate drawing records, thus, very different media. Chronologically, they span from the fifties to 2006, because Lipovac created until the very end of his life, all the while with full ardor and equal passion; there were no weaker phases, art was a necessity for him. The exhibition offers a new vision of key works of Lipovac’s opus, most of the works in the exhibition are from the family archives.
The invitation to the exhibition states that early works “underline the importance of Lipovac’s origins in the earliest contacts with creativity within his native Škaljari, Kotor,” but his earliest creations, which he created before studying at the Zagreb Academy of Applied Arts, unfortunately, have not been preserved.
At the very beginning of the exhibition, in the first room, alongside “Woman with a Cat,” the artist’s explorations are exhibited, e.g., in geometric abstraction and art informel, which were, admittedly, short-lived, followed by reliefs, then a more monochromatic phase, and the tour of the exhibition ends with erotic motifs on wood, which are chronologically among the artist’s last works. Vivid heads of sailors and widows he shaped from wood are in the setup in Klovićevi dvori on pedestals of different heights, and “Cyclists,” one of the artist’s most famous sculptures, consisting of a multitude of figures, are in a separate room. Particularly highlighted, visually, are the phases when the artist works with gold and the monochrome phases: white sculptures and mirror ones.
Vasko Lipovac was born in 1931 in Škaljari, a small settlement immediately next to Kotor in Montenegro, as the youngest of five children. The artist’s mother Antica, who herself had a penchant for art, was from a well-to-do Kotor family; her father was the prominent landowner Maksimilijan Lui. The father, merchant and shipping agent Spasoje Lipovac, appreciated and bought artworks as long as there was money. Artists were frequent guests in their house, so the choice of profession for the youngest of five children was understandable for the family; there was no resistance.
Changes and Searches
The general public’s perception at the mention of Vasko Lipovac are figures of the Mediterranean, then sailors, widows, brides, dandies, walkers on the waterfront, bishops, then erotica, witty and frisky most often (his erotic figures are some of the most elaborate in our art), then sports motifs, alongside “Cyclists” also jugglers, boxers, gymnasts, discus throwers, weightlifters. Colors are fundamental and strong, the audience loves him, feels his works.
However, that handwriting, generally known to the wider public, this exhibition will also show, is a handwriting he arrived at gradually, through many changes and searches, especially during his formation in the fifties of the last century. Precisely that contextualization brought by this retrospective was necessary for viewing Lipovac’s handwriting.
With Hegedušić
After graduating from the Academy of Applied Arts in Zagreb, Lipovac was in the workshop of Krsto Hegedušić, and it is known that Hegedušić chose exclusively the most talented students. At that time, alongside “Woman with a Cat,” the work “Sea Horse” was created: a shift towards stylization and abstraction. Zvonko Maković highlights two works created in 1956 as key works: the painting “Umbrella” which is, as he interprets, important for several reasons: “the stylization he carries out here is different from everything he did earlier. It is a sequence of schematized anthropomorphic figures whose bodies are vertical multicolored rectangles, and heads are spheres with barely indicated facial features,” while with the painting “Icon” he “indicated everything on which he would build his characteristic figuration from the sixties onwards.”
During the master workshop with Hegedušić, Lipovac became friends with Ordan Petlevski; they exhibited together in Great Britain, in the City of York Art Gallery the great art critic Herbert Read praised them, writing that both are worthy of attention, “each in his own way.” Lipovac’s works were also bought by Peggy Guggenheim. At the end of the fifties, he was briefly under the influence of EXAT 51, but later defined works of geometric abstraction as his failure, although one should not look at it that way: he certainly learned a lot about the reduction of motifs from this phase.