Antun Motika

Croatian artist Antun Motika (Pula, 1902. – Zagreb, 1992.) is widely known mostly as a painter, but his experimental body of work including experiments with light and collages is being explored, rediscovered and contextualized past 10 years. Antun Motika studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, graduating in 1926 from the class of prof Maksimilijan Vanka and Ljubo Babić. Between 1928 – 1929 Motika published illustrations in the satirical magazine Koprive / Nettles. Between 1929 – 1940 he worked as a high school teacher in Mostar, and from 1941 to 1961 as a professor at the School of Applied Arts in Zagreb. Motika's art derived from the post-impressionist tradition of European painting. From the 1940s he began to experiment with collage, photocollage, decalcomania, smoke, photo-graphics, and became interested in different media and materials and organic matter, on the background of constructivist avantgarde and surrealist ideas. His exploration of nature and media culminated with experiments with organic matter and light which he began with first in 1942 and he then took a step into innovative models of the medium of the deliberation and presentation of arts, which the history of art until recently has situated on the margins of his artistic production. His parallel mostly painterly artistic practice in 1950s showed articulation of the field of painting and strong modernist syntax. His works are part of major public collections in Croatia and many private collections. He participated at the Venice Biennale in 1942. Motika exhibited extensively, and was awarded with major national awards. Two retrospective exhibitions of his work were held in 1975 and 2002. Antun Motika Collection was established in 2006 as a public collection, in his home town, City of Pula.

http://www.zbirka-antun-motika.com/