Vlaho Bukovac

Vlaho Bukovac ( _it. Biagio Faggioni; 1855 - 1922) was a Croatian painter. Bukovac was born in Cavtat, the small town south of Dubrovnik in Dalmatia. He died in Prague.

tudy

Bukovac received his artistic education in Paris where he was sent by the patron Medo Pucić. His small studies and sketches delighted his professor, the well-known Alexandre Cabanel, and Bukovac became a student at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts. He painted in the spirit of embellished, "sweetened" realism and achieved great success at the Salons, at that time the place of the greatest review of works related to the arts. By following the artistic fashion of the public, he imbued it predominantly with his themes. Temporary destinations during his sojourn in France were England and the warm coast of Dalmatia where he was born. Otherwise, he was open to the world, including voyages to the Black Sea, as well as South and North America.

Artistic power

Besides being an artist who followed the established canons dictated by the Salon and the general public, there was another Bukovac who followed his own inner impulses of artistic creation. Liberated artistic expression, which was called impressionism, developed in the spirit of the artists who kept gathering in modernism-oriented marginal galleries in Paris in the 1870s. He knew the spirit of academism and, on the other hand, he felt the spirit of impressionistic freedom. Having accepted modern principles, Bukovac painted casual pictures, using liberated strokes of the brush, in the pointillist technique.

Zagreb

Bukovac became a significant representative of fine arts in Zagreb, Croatia from 1893 to 1897, bringing with him the spirit of French art. These new directives are most evident in his landscapes. He then began using a palette of lively and lighter colors using liberated strokes, soft rendering and the introduction of light on the painting canvas. With the time spent in Zagreb, he became the leader of all important cultural and artistic events. He founded the Zagreb multicoloured school, helped initiate the construction of the Art Pavilion, and organized the first artistic exhibition in the Academy Palace in 1893. Due to conflict with Isidor Kršnjavi and his great sensitivity, he withdrew to his native Cavtat where he stayed from 1898 to 1902. Upon his return to Prague he was appointed associate professor at the Akademie vytvarnyh umeni in 1903.

Pedagogy

His departure from Prague resulted in a complete change of personality for Bukovac. He felt satisfaction and enthusiasm in Zagreb that he had not felt in a while, and began to dedicate all of his energy to his new students, one of which was noted Croatian painter Mirko Rački. It was in this time he introduced pointillism to the Prague Academy, and earned his historical reputation as an excellent pedagogue.

His most famous painting is the curtain in HNK in Zagreb, "Croatian national revival".

External links

* [http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/collections/research/bukovak/index.asp Research project on Vlaho Bukovac]