Ante Kuman, 1939. Oil on canvas.

Description

Ante Kuman was born on March 13, 1902 in Apatin. He attended primary and secondary school in Vinkovci, and graduated in Vukovar.

Already in high school, he received art lessons from his teacher, the painter Dragan Renarić, and in 1921 he went to Vienna to study architecture at the Technical College.

The following year, he moved to Munich and enrolled in history and art studies before transferring to the Art Academy in 1923. That year, he received his diploma, and then got a job as a teacher at the school in Bjelovar, where he worked for almost ten years.
During that time, his student was Vojin Bakić, who was his first artistic mentor. Even during his studies, Kuman traveled and spent long periods in France and Italy.

His trip from Venice to Naples in 1925 is especially important, when he got acquainted with Renaissance and Baroque works, and he made a series of successful sketches, drawings, prints and paintings of Italian landscapes.

After returning to his homeland, he exhibited these paintings in public for the first time at an exhibition in Osijek. The last time Kuman exhibited was in Zagreb in 1933 at Salon Schira and in Bjelovar in 1934. In the post-war period, he lived in seclusion, and in recent years he suffered from eye diseases.
He died in a traffic accident in Zagreb on June 9, 1978.