Mirko Zrinšćak

Although he is a member of that narrow circle of artist who have made a cruical contribution to the enlargment of the concept of modern sculpture and won recognition from critics and the discipline on an international scale,the work of Mirko Zrinšćak in more recent Croatian art still enjoys the lot of a single,lasting and independent creative personallity not well enought known in the general public.Hence the exhibiton of recent works,sculpture installations in the Art Pavilion in Zagreb created in the last few years has not merely confirmed the reputaition has acquired earlier of being an artist of a distinctive and powerful indvidualism,but has in the most fitting manner drawn attention to Zrinšćak"s work and the nature of his sensibillity as sculptor.He is an artist who at the inital stage of his creative work showed the caracter and virtues of subtle constructor and investigator of form,cultivating the traditional experience of craft skills and almost instinctivively responding to initally paintery inspirations of powerful and the intimate private space is more important than the public,and that the inner light is stronger and more stimulating that the limelight.On his intimate,internal trail of an expirience of reality that presumed both a conceptual approach and constructive inclinations,the contours and signs of an autonomus,sistematically articulared artistic world essentially defined by categories of time and space,key topics in his art,were increasingly strongly recognised.Among the artist of his generation of the early 1980s,he remained a detached specimenwho crealy defined his own objectives and priorities,set high criteria and laid down the lines of action that(with the exeption of his short adventure in Abstract Expressionist painting) essentially stood aside from the common art pracice and the tropical media turmoils of the time.Adressing himself and his own options,he adopted a manner then counted on a space-time departure from anything that might possibly jeopardise the composure,discipline and patience of the creative being in the process of appropriating the objective and the everyday and transforming it into visual,trans-temporal art.Still,two events essentially characterised the artistics and personal biography of Mirko Zrinšćak.One was the course at the Academy in Venice uder the guidence of Emilio Vedova,the other was participation in the national selection at the Venice Bienalle in 1995.And while his years of study on the lagoons were an important turning point in his life and his profoundest expirience in terms of both exstence and profession,the appearance at the Bienalle was "starred" moment and an opportunity to make an international afirmation;Zrinšćak finally found his creative stronghold and the living and spiritual oasis of his domicile on Mount Učka.This was an effective and definitive return to spiritual roots,to his own wellsprings,a restoration to the primodial nature of things and the original principles of thinking through artistic form,inspiration for which he found in the things and objectives form from the immediate natural surroundings.It also meant a return to a personal Arcadia and to a general harmony of the creative imagination ,of concentrated work and contemplation.He was able to find manner that was to mark him lastingly as artist who in colaboration with nature established a fruitful ecological balance of spiritual and existential.
RADOVAN VUKOVIĆ 2008.

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