The exhibition at the CHF Dubrovnik features seventeen paintings focusing on the motifs of the linđo, a traditional folk dance in southern Croatia. The exhibition is primarily for the Croatian emigrants who have arrived in the city to celebrate Dubrovnik-Neretva County Day, May 12th, and the feast day of its patron St Leopold Bogdan Mandić.
An exhibition opened May 16th at the Dubrovnik branch office of the Croatian Heritage Foundation featuring paintings by local painter Jagoda Lasić. The works are a series focusing on the motifs of the linđo, a traditional folk dance in southern Croatia. The exhibition is primarily for the Croatian emigrants who have arrived in the city to celebrate Dubrovnik-Neretva County Day, May 12th, and the feast day of its patron St Leopold Bogdan Mandić.
Maja Mozara, the head of our office in Dubrovnik greeted the gathered and noted that archival sources indicate that a fraternity of painters was established in Dubrovnik in the 16th century—the first association of artists in the broader region—a fact that elicited the applause of all on hand. Art historian Marin Ivanović also noted that the current Croatian Association of Artists was founded in Zagreb as the Society of Croatian Artists in 1897 at the initiative of Dubrovnik painter Vlaho Bukovac. Reading the foreword to the exhibition catalogue, he also noted that Jagoda Lasić is an award-winning painter and has staged numerous solo exhibitions and taken part in many group showings.
“In the formal sense these are depictions of walks, processions, dance, the movement of human bodies, and Jagoda has found her way of expressing this dynamic on the canvas, interpreting a moment we perceive as vibrant, fluid and transient. She has succeeded in transposing this movement in gestural, broad and open strokes of the brush. (…) Although unambiguous themes such as landscapes, panoramas or, in this case, dance, have been rejected from post modernism and are regarded somewhat askance, contemporary painting (modernist) in the past two decades has, on a global scale, once again inaugurated hedonism, colour, contemplation and grandeur. The interpretation of “grand” themes such as social sensitivity, ecology and suppressed minorities has once again ceded the floor to pure artistry, a connection to a motif, usually local in nature, and the revelation and painting of its values. (…) Jagoda Lasić has shown herself to be a painter that effortlessly transposes a desire for personal freedom to a gestural stroke of the brush, creating powerful works that break out of the frame of the milieu in which they are created.
Text by: Maja Mozara; Photos by: Željko Tutnjević