The Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts Department of Prints and Drawings

presents the monograph

MIROSLAV ŠUTEJ/ Mobile Serigraphs

by Slavica Marković and
Zvonko Maković

on Wednesday, October 28, at 6 pm
in the Library of the Academy at Strossmayerov trg 14, Zagreb

The following will speak at the presentation:

President of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts Academician Zvonko Kusić

Academician Tonko Maroević
Academician Nikica Petrak
Dr Zvonko Maković
Slavica Marković,MSc

Miroslav Šutej is an exceptional personality in the Croatian art of the second half of the 20th century, a moral exemplar, an undoubted authority at both the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and the Academy of Fine Arts in Široki Brijeg, as well as a pivotal figure of Croatian and a prominent name in international printmaking. This is shown by the many awards and prizes taken at the most important exhibitions of graphic art (in Ljubljana, Tokyo and Krakow, for example) and by his being featured in the most important museums and collections in the world (in, for example, the Tate Gallery in London, the Library of Congress in London, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki).

In line with the carefully formed profile of the Department of Prints and Drawings as a specialist institution, and prompted by a very large donation, in the monograph to be presented we give a selection of the graphic oeuvre, with an emphasis on mobile serigraphy, Šutej’s most valuable and most complete, internationally greatly appreciated section, which he promoted with the first specimens of mobile serigraphy (Venice SM1, Venice SM2) at the 34th Venice Biennale in 1968, gradually completing and rounding it off during the following two decades.

Mobile serigraphs are a distinctive component of Šutej’s work and an authentic contribution to contemporary Croatian and world graphic art. We will present all the works from the Šutej Donation to the Department, specimens from the Foundation in Motovun, from the Graphic Collection of the National and University Library, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb and from several private collections.

For the first time, we are systematically presenting (in a series of photographs of different compositions of the same prints) the multi-compositional dimension of his serigraphy and point out the ludic dimension of his work, described first back in the seventies by the legendary professor Vera Horvat Pintarić, now a distinguished academician, as well as by many subsequent interpreters of his work.

Šutej’s work is provocative, prompts both mind and hand simultaneously, and becomes for at least a moment the property of the observer, the current creator in the reorganisation and creation of a new composition. As against the strict geometry and mathematical precision argued by the actors of the New Tendencies (in particular, Picelj in Paris and in Zagreb), Šutej composes with mobile elements, respecting and invoking randomicity, not joining in the then current trend to geometrical abstraction without reserve or a personal viewpoint. His shift is authentic, gladdening, disturbing and yet encouraging to the observer, opening up proving grounds of uninhibited competition and constantly waiting for a change in the relation of the set elements. But he is not satisfied with the fact of playing for he wants much more - he wants to set the viewer playing as well. Thus the work is not an object for a brief encounter, a mere flash in the spirit of the observer, rather an active medium that vigorously absorbs both mind and heart, all the internal energies of the being.

Slavica Marković