Ivan Picelj. Composition. in 1957

Description

Ivan Picelj was born on July 28, 1924 in Okučani. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb from 1943-1946.

After his studies, he was involved in arranging and equipping stands at the then Zagreb Fair in Savska, which significantly influenced his further work. Because he opted for the then modern trend of combining art and industry, which remained the guiding thought of his work. His work on the equipment of fair exhibitions led him to lucrative jobs - decorating Yugoslav pavilions in Zagreb, Vienna, Hanover, Stockholm, Turin, Chicago, which he carried out together with his colleagues Vjenceslav Richter and Aleksander Srnec.

Friendship and cooperation with them, and a joint effort to make these performances more attractive, was the basis for founding the art group EXAT 51 in 1951 and the Studio for Industrial Design (SIO) in 1956. Picelj was personally very involved in these projects, the first exhibition of the EXAT group 51, 1952, he organized in his own apartment in Gajeva.

Picelj developed his specific, apersonal painting direction of geometric abstraction, under the influence of the then modern constructivism and Bauhaus. He actively participated in the creation and spread of the international New Tendencies movement (1961-1967), for whose exhibitions he created a series of dedicated works, exploring visual perception, mathematical rhythms and particle movements.

Picelja became interested in the physical dimension of sight and its subjective impression, and he explored the limits of perception and thus began to create in the spirit of Op art. Most often, he multiplied some geometric figure within the regular grid of the surface, with some shift in color or shape.

Since 1952, he has exhibited intensively at collective exhibitions; EXAT 51, in the country and abroad (New Reality Salon Paris, Fifty Years of Abstract Art and Responsive Eye New York 1965, Selected works from the collection of Denise Rene – Las Palmas). Apart from Zagreb, he exhibited independently in London, Chicago, New York, Rotterdam, Venice, Padua, Ulm, Augsburg...

Since 1957, he has been making sculptures, reliefs in wood and objects in metal. 1959 was significant for Picelj, when he exhibited for the first time in the Paris Denise René gallery together with Aleksandar Srnec and Vojin Bakić, which became his home gallery - which exhibited and sold his works.

Picelj has been a very active graphic designer since the 1960s, creating numerous posters, catalog and book accessories, as the in-house designer of the then Gallery of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. He is one of the pioneers of graphic design and significantly improves the visual culture of graphic design in the country.

Ivan Picelj died on February 22, 2011 in Zagreb.