Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Ivan Večenaj
Croatian, Yugoslav; 20th-century
Zagreb, Croatia: Croatian Museum of Naive Art
38%
Kobila Na Paši (Mare at Pasture). 1961. Oil on glass
Večenaj was from the second generation of Hlebine artists, a school of "naive" painters under the tutelage of a professor from Zagreb, the first generation of which included painters like Ivan Generalić. Večenaj was the best of the second generation, but still he was worse than the worst from the first. By his time, this strain of untaught art in Croatia had become a manner, a brand. It seems that Večenaj had some sense of this, as there's much more verisimilitude and technical accomplishment in his paintings than in those of his forebears, but unfortunately it's to their aesthetic detriment. There's more depth, more accurate modeling but the characteristic flatness of the earlier work has left the province of the artist's personal style, and is instead enforced by the painting's substrate (Večenaj typically painted on glass). The best part of the painting is that purple tree, which seems truly whimsical as against the imposed whimsy of, say, the contemplative kid in the foreground. (TFS, 2025)