An exhibition of the great fresco master

Until January 24th the Klovićevi Dvori gallery will be the venue for a retrospective exhibition of works by the great Croatian painter of the 20th century, Jozo Kljaković. The exhibition features more than a hundred artworks, which include: oils on canvas, drawings, sketches, book illustrations, posters, and prints by this extremely prolific artist.

Jozo Kljaković was born in 1889 in Solin; he was schooled at the Prague Academy as well as in Rome. He gained experience under F. Hodler in Geneva, and learned the art of fresco painting from M. Lenoire in Paris. Between 1921 and 1943, he was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, where he taught wall painting and decorative painting. Then he moved to Rome where he lived, apart from a few years that he spent in Buenos Aires, until 1968 when he returned to Zagreb and died there the following year.
 
Since he mostly used motifs of religion and his homeland in his works, Jozo Kljaković is known to the wide audiences for his frescos in numerous sacral structures. He painted a series of fourteen frescos at St. Mark’s Church in the Upper Town in Zagreb, and his works are also featured in St. Martin’s Church in Vranjic, Zvonimir’s memorial church in Biskupija by Knin, and the Pontifical Croatian College of St. Jerome in Rome. A multimedia setup was devised for this exhibition, and a catalogue with photos of his works, shot at authentic locations, was printed. A great number of works presented at Klovićevi Dvori are on loan from other museums across Croatia and the world.

Besides painting, Jozo Kljaković also wrote contemporary prose, and he donated the house he had lived in, as well as his works, to the city of Zagreb in 1969.