Miroslav Šutej’s Serigraphs

Marking the 20^th anniversary of the death of Miroslav Šutej (1936-2005), academician and torchbearer of Croatian graphic arts, we remember his most significant achievements with an exhibition of the works from the holdings of the Department of Prints and Drawings of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

In 1996, academician Miroslav Šutej, after the first big retrospective exhibition of prints organised by the Department of Prints and Drawings of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, donated seventy prints to our institution for the 20^th and 21^st Century Collection, enriching our holdings primarily with mobile serigraphs which make the core of his fascinating work. The donated mobile prints ranging from the late sixties to the late nineties comprise a unit in terms of time and motif, complemented and rounded in 2018 with the acquisition of the first mobile serigraph (Venice, 1968); as such, it represents an exceptionally valuable part of the holdings of the Department of Prints and Drawings.

Although the collection also keeps Šutej’s early drawings, as well as smaller-scale prints of ludic content, as well as later mobile lithographs and offset prints (a total of 146 drawings and prints), the focus of this virtual exhibition is on the author’s finest pieces which positioned him among the top ranks of the international contemporary printmaking, more accurately on the works made in the serigraphy technique during the crucial creative period spanning twenty years (1965 – 1985), which demonstrate the artist’s evolutionary trajectory from Op art to mobile prints – a phenomenon typical of Šutej. The chronologically displayed selection once again clearly summarises and underlines Šutej’s indisputable contribution to the national art history anthology and confirms the timeliness and innovativeness of his pieces still today.

Also, with this exhibition we mark the tenth anniversary of the large monographic edition dedicated to Šutej’s printmaking work. The book Miroslav Šutej: mobilne serigrafije, published by the Department of Prints and Drawings (2015), penned by Zvonko Maković and Slavica Marković, also the book’s editor, introduces the mobile serigraphs in the most suitable way with textual and visual presentations. Therefore, this virtual exhibition leans on the newly expounded presentation of this most inventive part of the artist’s work.

Ana Petković Basletić