THE WORKS of Zlatko Prica are to be found in many privatecollections in the country and abroad, including museums in Zagreb(The Modern Gallery, The Gallery of Contemporary Arts, The Graphics Cabinet of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences, The Historical Museum), Belgrade (The Museum of Contemporary Arts), Split(The Gallery of Works of Art), Rijeka (The Modern Gallery), Dubrovnik(The Art Gallery), Skopje (The Museum of Contemporary Arts), Sao Paulo (Museo de Arte Moderna), Antwerp (Konikiijke Akademie voor Shone Kunsten), Stuttgart (Stadtsgalerie, Coil. A. Stankowski), Prague (Narodna Galerija), Brooklyn (Institute of Arts and Sciences), Cincinnati (Art Museum), London (Gallery One), Pecs (Museum Vasarely, Janus Pannonius Museum), Varazdin (The Art Gallery), Paris (The Creuse Gallery), Milan (Coil. L. De Tullio), Rome (Coil. Fanfani), New Delhi (Coil. Mrs. Ghandi), New York (The Brooklyn Museum), Lansdowne - Pens. (Coil. M. V. Kempner), Philadelphia (Coil. Dr. Klarmann), Kingston (Coil. B. Reinisch). He was the founder of The Group 58 and is a member of the MART group in Zagreb in 1958. Zlatko Prica is one of the founders of the Zagreb Forum Gallery (1969). He became a full member of the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1988 and two years later he was declared an honorary citizen of the town of Pecs. Zlatko Prica was born in the town of Pecs, Hungary in 1916. He finished the first grade of elementary school in this town. The school still stands on the main square which is dominated by Turkish architecture and minaret. It is important that Prica absorbed this evident proof of civilized and religious tolerance, which he took with him from his native city as a civilizational lesson. In 1922 he moved with his parents to Zagreb. He had no knowledge of Croatian, so he was not able to continue his education immediately. That is why he spent a year in the kindergarten held by St. Vincent nuns in Samostanska Street (presentday Varsavska). When he learnt Croatian, he enrolled in the second grade of elementary school. After the basic education he became a student of the Second Classical Grammar School, where he completed his secondary education. He did not choose to study at the Academy of Fine Arts (in those days called The Arts Academy), as he says with humour, but the Academy chose him. Obviously, he knew his destiny from his very early days. His father was unconsciously responsible for his decision to become a painter, as he often "incautiously" talked about his excellent grades in "free drawing". To confirm his words, he demonstrated his drawing skills to little Zlatko, who considered such encouragement more than a momentary interest in painted objects and motifs. Therefore, Zlatko Prica's path was very clearly plotted, and during his last year in grammar school he practised drawing even more intensively. It was only by chance that he arranged an exhibition, together with his colleague, sculptor Kosta Angeli Radovani at the end of the school year (Radovani exhibited sculptures, castings, drawings and reliefs). This was the artist's first exhibition for a wider audience. In the "prehistory" of Prica's work, prior to his enrolment in the Arts Academy in Zagreb (1936-1940) we find an interesting story about how, at the end of the sixth grade, Prica gathered a number of his drawings and paintings and visited Krsto Hegedusic who told him: "Listen young man, if you continue like this, we'll see...Maybe something will become of you one day. Based on what I've seen, I agree to spend my time on you." While preparing for the entrance examination, Prica studiously and joyfully painted in the studio of Krsto Hegedusic - actually, that of Hegedusic's father-in-law, the sculptor Robert Franges Mihanovic (1872-1940). The entrance examination was supervised by 0. Mujadzic. While K. Hegedusic found no "fatal" flaws in the young man's drawings, Lj. Babic described them as "undisciplined" and "messy". But Hegedusic managed to persuade the pedantic Lj. Babic that Prica's hand was valuable and promising. Besides Prica, there was another painter, Ivan Lovrencic and several Slovenian applicants who were tested in a similar way. Prica's teachers (Mujadzic, Babic) insisted on the "perfect draughtsmanship", so he achieved it thanks to 0. Mujadzic mostly, who became an example of a teacher and a role model. Prica was very grateful to him even after his graduation in 1940. Krsto Hegedusic had a fine intuition about Prica's drawing talent, which later, at the end of the last year of his studies with Lj. Babic, achieved its goal and Prica was entrusted with the task of correcting students' work instead of the professor. At the final exhibition of graduation work, Prica was awarded the "Paris scholarship" for 1940 by the Academy Senate. The desire to bring together his scattered works after several years of painting and to see his pictures in one place resulted in an exhibition in the Art Pavilion in April, 1941. At the beginning of the war, he transported his paintings from Samobor to Zagreb in a horse drawn cart, prepared and opened the exhibition in the space which, together with the Ulrich Gallery, was not just an exhibition area but a criterion of value. He sold three pictures for the holdings of the University Library (the buyer was the art historian, Academician A. Schneider). Upon returning to Samobor and Mirnovec (birth place of Nikola Reiser) his youthful ideals of equality, social justice and better society got him arrested and confined to the Danica internment camp (near Koprivnica) in 1941. He was released in the same year (the portfolio "People from the Danica internment camp reflects his experiences as acamp inmate). In 1942 Prica got married and his best men were the painters and teachers K. Hegedusic and Lj. Babic. In the summer of 1943 he left for eurnberak with his wife to join the Partisans, where he worked in the Department of Art and Culture of ZAVNOH (The Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Croatia) and the following year he left for Topusko, where he made graphic illustrations for the soul stirring poem Jama ("The Pit") written by 1. G. Kovacic, together with the painter E. Murtic. It was a portfolio which rejected any didactic theme or narration, representing the expressionist impulsiveness and fury which proved to be the most effective way of evoking the scenes of horror in Kovacic's poem. It was a unique example of interpretative creative freedom, hardly found anywhere in Europe in the wartime or during the ideological tendentiousness and opression after the war. As an "undisciplined" or "disobedient element", Prica did not earn the trust of the communist party establishment, nor did he enjoy the laurels awaiting the followers of the rational, didactic art - the art intended for the so called " wide popular masses". After living in Paris (1948), India (1952) and Brazil (1954) for short periods Prica returned to Samobor and, in keeping with his nature, began to appreciate the values of the small, still patriarchal and archaic environment, its ethnographic, folklore and traditional characteristics, wealth of national costumes and fabrics (especially white linen shirts). The best homage to this small, gentle environment was his "Samobor cycle", depicting the life that did not resist the temptations of urban iconography that threatened to displace (in a brutal and disappointing manner) the endearing, stimulating, traditional signs of daily life. At the invitation of the architect Duka Kavuric, Prica spent some time in India (Duka Kavuric was invited to India as an architect to build pavilions in Karachi and New Delhi). Fascinated by the Indian culture and art, especially by Indian Ajante frescos, and impressed by their two dimensional impact, he resorted to strong graphism seen in the pictures that were result of the "conditioned construction of one space in two dimensions" (Prica) - the graphism similar to the Kiev, Moscow and Byzantine iconographic schools, and especially to the Shanti Niketan school (R. Tagore). From "The Samobor Cycle" (1938-57), through "Fruits of the Earth" (1957-69), "The Anatomy of Nature" (1969-71) and "The Tar Cycle" (1971-92) we always find not only clear themes but also clear tectonic principles of painting based on the horizontal and the vertical axis which inclined more to the hymnic like and epic world (also purely Mediterranean), relying on the synthesis of colour and drawings, ofgraphism and colourism. In his latest cycle, produced at the age in which an artist might find himself complacently repeating his -already established creative premises, the restless spirit of Z. Prica took him to new interests. The Opatija Umbrellas (from 1991 on) promote a brave and significant change and evolution of the morphologic structure in paintings, with a clearer lyrical ambiance and value, yet still of a disciplined construction (and language) - a construction which has protected him against both randomness and canon and enabled him to strike the right balance between order and intuition, method and spontaneousness. Fighting his illness (the illness of the eyes which is particularly difficult for a painter) and the hardships of life (his wife's death, his daughters illness...) Prica presents in his paintings that love for life and search for its meaning which did not take him to the philosophy of hopelessness, but rather to stoic dignity, findingjoyin life in all its surface (not superficial) and inner, visible and invisible faces. His newest works, drawings and watercolours, demonstrate this very well they offer an inexhaustible fountain of interpretive and colouristic boldness dealing with a subject that seems so banal at first, yet for the artist it is so inspiring (umbrellas). This confirms the lively and inde structible spirit of the painter whose many misfortunes in life have notruined his desire to contribute creatively to society. Declaring himself an heir the Zagreb luminism started in the circle of Vlaho Bukovac and recognized in Europe as Die bunte Schule von Agram, Prica confirmed that orientation with his "Rooftops of Samobor" (1951). M. Valsecchi acclaimed that painting as, a counterpart to Cezanne's "Maison de pendu". It provided a programme that the artist's future work was to follow and develop further. Prica remained consistent with this vision of painting for the next five decades. It remained as an important constant from his early days to the Samobor cycle (but never quoting folklore directly). It is to be found in the analytical tendencies in "Fruits of Nature" (1947-57) and in his Mediterranean inspiration which reflects the youthful closeness with literal allusions to Ancient Greece, discovered in his .years of humanistic education in grammar school. Time will show whether the "innovation" in "The Opatija Umbrellas" is another tribute to the initial impetus of the basics that he chose when he decided to continue the Zagreb luminism. An artist and a person who belongs to several places (Zagreb, Samobor, Tar, Pecs), Prica has found his real home, over and overagain in painting, standing as a landmark in the post war Croatian painting. back to the top