CROATIAN-FRENCH PAINTER VIRGILIJE NEVJESTIĆ

Virgilije Nevjestić, a Croatian painter active in Paris , is and artist of a rich surrealist-poetic expression (see his maps of prints such as Hommage a Jean Fouquet, La divine comédie, etc.). He reached the peak of his career by exhibiting along with Jackson Pollock and other great artists at the Beaubourg in Paris in 1982. Nevjestić searches for the reflection of the soul much in the same way an alchemist sought for the stone of wisdom, often with surprising results, albeit one might claim that in printmaking everything could be foreseen. But the symbolic measure of each Nevjestić statement, along with a well-studied negative, and an unforeseeable thread of the drawing, may change the positive of his print note into a surreal fantasy. The artist was born in 1935, and by the way of Tomislavgrad he reached Zagreb and Paris , moving from being a talented youth to an artist of international recognition. His climb to the top happened in the seventies. Among the first to write about Nevjestić back home was the critic and art theoretician Vladimir Maleković. Nevjestić, artist and poet, was awarded the Vjesnik's "Josip Račić Prize" for his exhibition at the Forum Gallery in Zagreb in 1974. The same year he made a prints map with the poems of A.B. Šimić, and the well-received map The Vagabond in Paradise, published by the Biškupić Collection. In spite of all that, the Croatian art criticism did not induct Nevjestić into the hall of fame of the seventies, but those were the years of his rapid affirmation in France . He was hired by the French Institute for the Restoration of Art Works (IFROA), and today, in addition to teaching there, he heads a special school of fresco restoration at Saint-Savin sur Gartempe. Nevjestić's career is unbelievably rich, and a comparison with Juraj Klović imposes itself. Klović left a great artistic legacy within the Renaissance artistic idiom, and spread the fame of the Croatian name. Nevjestić did the same, but he was also an eloquent witness of the brutal aggression suffered by Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina . He spoke the truth on the French Radio, on the pages of the Figaro , and he exhibited four maps of prints entitled Before the Dawn - Homage to Croatian People , in the National and University Library in Paris . This inspired dedication and the exhibited masterpieces did more for the truth about Croatia than any loud and sophisticated propaganda effort would have done.

 

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