Art of the 20th Century

 

Art Styles in 20th century Art Map


 

Ivan Generalic



 

Ivan Generalic
 

(b Hlebine, 21 Dec 1914).

Croatian painter. A farmer by occupation, his artistic talent was discovered in 1930 by Krsto Hegedusic. He became the most celebrated Yugoslav naive painter and the central figure of a group of naive painters known as the HLEBINE SCHOOL. In the 1930s the simple and expressive folk style and the clear colours in which he depicted peasant scenes with traditional customs, merry festivals, tragic deaths or arduous peasant work came close to the socially critical aesthetic of the committed artists in the group Zemlja. Yet he did not develop this expression of childlike simplicity by drawing on its primary force but by studying painting, focusing particularly on problems of perspective and space and on colour.