Zoran Mu\u0161i\u010d (1909\u20132005)

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Zoran Mu\u0161i\u010d (12 February 1909 \u2013 25 May 2005), baptised as Anton Zoran Mu\u0161i\u010d, was a Slovene painter, printmaker, and draughtsman from the Karst Plateau near the Adriatic Sea. He was the only painter of Slovene descent who managed to establish himself in the elite cultural circles of Italy and France, particularly Paris, where he lived for most of his later life. He painted landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits, as well as scenes of horror from the Dachau concentration camp and vedute of Venice.

Zoran Mu\u0161i\u010d was born in a Slovene-speaking family in Bukovica, a village in the Vipava Valley near Gorizia, in what was then the Austrian County of Gorizia and Gradisca (now in Slovenia). Mu\u0161i\u010d's father Anton was the headmaster of the local school, and his mother Marija (née Bla\u017ei\u010d) was a teacher there. Both parents were Slovenes from the Gori\u0161ka region: his father was from the village of \u0160martno in the Gorizia Hills, and his mother was born in the hamlet of Kostanjevica in the village of Lig.[4]

Mu\u0161i\u010d's father was mobilized and served on various battlefields during the First World War. In 1915, during the Battles of the Isonzo, the family (his mother with two children) was forced to flee to Arna\u010de, a village near Velenje in the Duchy of Styria, where Zoran attended elementary school. In the spring of 1918, toward the end of World War I, the family moved back to Gorizia, but they were expelled again in late August 1919 by the Italian authorities, which had occupied the region. They moved to Griffen in Carinthia, but were expelled once again by the Austrian authorities after the Carinthian Plebiscite in late October 1920. They finally settled in Lower Styria, then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.[4]

Mu\u0161i\u010d attended two high schools in Maribor till 1928. After, he visited Vienna for a short time. Between 1930 and 1935 he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. Mu\u0161i\u010d spoke Slovene, German, Croat, Italian, French and some Friulian.[5]

After graduation in 1934, he travelled extensively. He spent three months (April to June 1935) in Spain, mainly Madrid. Later he served his obligatory army service in Bile\u0107a (1936). He spent each summer in Dalmatia while being based in Maribor and nearest village Ho\u010de. In 1940, he moved to Ljubljana permanently. During this period (1942), he painted in two churches in his native Gori\u0161ka region, together with his friend Avgust \u010cernigoj (Dre\u017enica, Grahovo) and one in village Gradno with another Slovenian painter Lojze Spacal. In October 1943, he moved to Trieste and later to Venice. He had his first one-man show (outside Yugoslavia) in Trieste and several months later in Venice. In early October 1944, he was arrested by the Nazi German forces because he was in a group of Slovene anti-fascists. The group had hidden transmitter and was connected with IS. His drawing and painting in Venice raised suspicions that he was a spy, and a month later he was sent to Dachau concentration camp, where he made more than 150 sketches of life in the camp, some under extremely difficult circumstances. From the drawings, mainly executed in May 1945, he managed to save around eighty (some more with his friends). After liberation by Americans in April 29, 1945, Mu\u0161i\u010d returned to Ljubljana in early June. There, he was sent to a hospital. A month later he was subjected to the pressures by the newly established Communist regime and moved to Gorizia at the end of July 1945. In the following months he travelled in the area of Trieste and Istria, spending some time in Pinguente (Buzet). In October 1945 he settled in Venice with the help of family Cadorin. In September 1949 he married younger painter Ida Cadorin - Barbarigo there.[4]

In 1950 he won the Gualino prize and in 1956 the Grand Prize for his printmaking at the Venice Biennale. In 1951 he was awarded the Prix de Paris, (jointly with Antonio Corpora in 1951) for his colorful paintings of Dalmatia. After 1952 he lived mainly in Paris, where the 'lyrical abstraction' of the French Informel determined the art world. Throughout this period he kept his studio in Venice and exhibited again at the Biennale in 1960, when he was awarded the UNESCO Prize. The much acclaimed series We are not the Last, in which the artist transformed the terror of his experiences in the concentration camp into documents of universal tragedy, was made in the 1970s.[4] His last achievement were series of Selfportratis and Double portraits. His last paintings were dated in the year 2000.

In 1981 Mu\u0161i\u010d was appointed Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in Paris. Mu\u0161i\u010d's work has been honoured in numerous international exhibitions, such as the large retrospective exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1995, opened by the French and Slovenian presidents François Mitterrand and Milan Ku\u010dan.[4] At the same time Austrians promised him a permanent exhibition in Klagenfurt. It was never established. A huge part of his works was taken from his studio and never returned to the painter or his wife.

In 1991, Mu\u0161i\u010d was given the Pre\u0161eren Award for lifetime achievement, the highest decoration in the field of the arts in Slovenia.[3] Some of Mu\u0161i\u010d's works have been featured at Piran Coastal Galleries.[6] Gallery Zala from Ljubljana prepared 6 exhibitions (3 in Ljubljana, one in: Belgrade, Vienna and London). A big retrospective was prepared in Modern Gallery in Ljubljana November 2009. Academy of Sciences from Slovenia published a monograph, written by 20 authors from Slovenia, Croatia, Austria, Italy and France (Vizije Zorana Mu\u0161i\u010da) November 2012. First permanent exhibition of his prints was open in Dobrovo in 1991. Only permanent exhibition of his different works (paintings, prints, drawings) was open in National Gallery in Ljubljana in 2016. Bigger exhibition of selected works was prepared in Lugano, Collezione Braglia in October 2016. Another exhibition was in Venice at Fortuny Museum in spring 2018: A Tribute to Zoran Music, The Zurich Room. The Leopold Museum in Vienna opened a bigger retrospective exhibition in April 2018 with 167 selected works.

He died in Venice in 2005 at the age of 96. He is buried in the local St. Michele cemetery.

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