Leopold Museum Opens Large-Scale Zoran Mušič Exhibition
17.04.2018
Most comprehensive retrospective dedicated to the work of an exceptional artist!
“ZORAN MUŠIČ. Poetry of Silence”, the most comprehensive exhibition on the oeuvre of the artist Zoran Mušič (1909–2005) in Austria to date, opened on Thursday, 12th April, at the Leopold Museum. After more than 25 years, the artist’s works are once again on display in Vienna. Celebrating the exhibition opening, the Leopold Museum’s Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger spoke of a “long overdue large-scale retrospective dedicated to an eminent painter and graphic artist” who – born into the former Imperial and Royal Habsburg Monarchy and hailing from the present-day tri-border region of Slovenia, Italy and Austria – “experienced an odyssey of a life during the turmoil of the 20th century and became a European, even though he always remained an artistic outsider.”
The exhibition
The chronologically structured exhibition curated by Hans-Peter Wipplinger and Ivan Ristić dedicated to the oeuvre of this exceptional artist comprises some 170 paintings and works on paper. Through select loans from international private collections and museums in Slovenia, Switzerland, Spain and Austria, all periods of the artist’s oeuvre are represented. The exhibition traces an arc from the artist’s academic early oeuvre, via the harrowing drawings from his time as a captive at Dachau concentration camp, his views of Venice, his depictions of small horses and his Dalmatian landscape impressions, with which he attempted to return to life, via his abstract works created around 1960 in keeping with the Nouvelle École de Paris, his commemorative cycle executed from 1970 “We Are Not the Last”, in which he processed the repressed memories of the horrors of the concentration camp which had fought their way back into his consciousness with full force, all the way to his quiet, poetical late oeuvre, in which the great humanist Mušič addressed the transience of human existence.
Commemorative year 2018
Owing to this biographical aspect of the exhibition, which is inextricably linked with Zoran Mušič’s work, Hans-Peter Wipplinger considers the presentation a contribution made by the Leopold Museum to the commemorative year 2018. This year, we remember the fateful events which occurred 80 years ago following “Austria’s celebration of the so-called ‘Anschluss’, when National Socialism introduced the darkest era of the history of humanity and civilization.”
The exhibition opening ceremony, to which the Slovenian Minister for Culture Anton Peršak, Leopold Museum Director Hans-Peter Wipplinger as well as co-curator Ivan Ristić contributed speeches, was attended by hundreds of guests, including the artist’s niece Vanda Mušič, the Slovenian ambassador Ksenija Škrilec, her deputy, envoy Marjana Prvinšek Bokal, Barbara Koželj Podlogar, cultural attaché and head of the Slovenian cultural information center SKICA, embassy counselor Petra Draušbaher Krušič, embassy counselor Dušan Pšeničnik, the museum directors Zdenka Badovinac (director of the Moderna galerija Ljubljana), Klaus-Albrecht Schröder (Albertina), Christoph Thun-Hohenstein (MAK) as well as the Leopold Museum’s Managing Director Gabriele Langer, Dorotheum-CEO Martin Böhm, Leopold Museum board member Elisabeth Leopold, the artists Martha Jungwirth, Hubert Scheibl, Walter Vopava, Julia Avramidis, Elke Silvia Krystufek and Suse Krawagna, the gallery owners François Ditesheim and Patrick Maffei (Ditesheim & Maffei, Neuchâtel), Wilfried Magnet, Alessandro Rosada (Galerie Torbandena, Trieste), Alois Wienerroither and Eberhard Kohlbacher, Nicolas Treadwell and Susanne Bauer, as well as the collectors Angel Surroca, Karl-Heinz and Agnes Essl, Igor and Mojca Lah, Waltraud Leopold, Philipp Otto Breicha, Marianne Kirstein-Jacobs, Sonja Štangelj and Gaia Jäggli (Fondazione Gabriele e Anna Braglia, Lugano). Also among the opening guests were the curators Elisabeth Dutz (Albertina), Franz Smola (Belvedere), Heike Eipeldauer and Verena Gamper (Leopold Museum), the contributors to the exhibition’s catalogue Gojko Zupan and Marilena Pasquali, the journalist Friedrich Orter, and many others.
The exhibition “ZORAN MUŠIČ. Poetry of Silence” is shown from 13th April to 6th August 2018 at the Leopold Museum.
Co-curator Ivan Ristić guides visitors through the exhibition on Friday, 13th April 2018, and on Friday, 22nd June 2018, at 4 pm.
Catalogue accompanying the exhibition
The exhibition is accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue published with Walther König publishers, Cologne, entitled “ZORAN MUŠIČ. Poesie der Stille”, edited by Ivan Ristić and Hans-Peter Wipplinger, with a foreword by Hans-Peter Wipplinger, excerpts of an interview by Jean Clair with the artist and essays by Marilena Pasquali, Ivan Ristić, Hans-Peter Wipplinger and Gojko Zupan. It includes 256 pages, numerous illustrations and extensive plates of the exhibits featured in the presentation. The catalogue is available for 29.90 Euro at the Leopold Museum Shop.
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