The Retrospective Exhibition by Antun Boris Švaljek: Cloud in the Head

– On the postmodernist premises, Antun Boris Švaljek (1951 – 2023) conceived his creative principle, which he used to build the artistic expression of unique authorial characteristics that we read in the retrospective exhibition in a chronological line from the first works from the 1970s to the last ones dated to the 1920s.

In the recent selection, Švaljek's artwork, in a wide thematic scope and in various art media, drawing, painting, sculpture, shows that it was created on European artistic values ​​in an impressive stylistic range from Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Art Nouveau stylistic features, to those that have marked the modern and especially contemporary art scene: magic realism, surrealism, pop art, comics, coloristic expressionism. The retrospective exhibition substantiates the claim that Švaljek, in addition to his exceptional painting, drawing, graphic and sculptural skills, created works with a distinctive imagination, ludic invention, grotesque, sarcasm and cheerful humor, shaping his own artistic discourse that is recognized in contemporary Croatian art in terms of authorial expressiveness as typically Švaljekian, states Milan Bešlić.

Antun Boris Švaljek (Zagreb, 1951 – Zadar, 2023) graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1974 in the class of Prof. Šime Perić. He was an associate of the Master Workshop of Prof. Krsto Hegedušić, as well as a long-time professor at the Široki Brijeg Academy of Fine Arts of the University of Mostar. For his exceptional contribution to Croatian art, he was awarded the Order of the Croatian Daystar with the image of Marko Marulić. He spent his youth in Varaždin, where he gained his first painting experience at the Gymnasium, and in the early 1980s he moved to Zadar, where he created until the end of his life.

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