Aleksandar Srnec | i |
 
last name: Srnec
first name: Aleksandar
birthday: July 30, 1924
birth-place: Zagreb (Croatia)
death date: March 27, 2010
died in: Zagreb (Croatia)
Summary

Snerc is an was a Croatian avant-garde painter, sculptor , designer and author of animated films. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (from 1943 to 1946, and from 1947 to 1949) and architecture in between. He’s one of the founders of the Exat 51, which advocated for abstract art, contemporary visual communication and synthesis of all the disciplines of artistic creativity.

For a short time involved in animated film (1959 to 1960) as a collaborative project with Zagreb school of animated film, where he designed the scenography for three puppet films, and collaborated with Dragutin Vunak on animated film ‘The Man and Shadow’ (1960).

During the sixties Srnec has participated at the exhibition of New Tendencies and in seventies he created a kinetic sculpture from high polished metals.

At the exhibition ‘Ambience Lumino-plastics’ (SC Gallery, Zagreb 1967) the first lumino kinetic object in Croatia was presented, designed by Aleksandar Srnec.

Biography

1924 Born in Zagreb, Croatia.
???? In Zabreg, graduated from high school and painting class of famous artist Antun Motika.
1943 Srnec enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. During the first year of his studies with his colleagues Ivo Kalina and Ivan Picelj, he founded the Ipikas art group, named after its members’ initials.
1948 – 1951 Together with Vjenceslav Richter and Ivan Picelj, he worked on the design of Yugoslav exhibitions and pavilions at industrial and cultural fairs in Yugoslavia and abroad (People’s Republic of Croatia Book Exhibition, Industry of the P.R. of Croatia in Zagreb, Brotherhood and Unity Highway in Zagreb and Belgrade, projects for Yugoslav pavilions at fairs in Stockholm, Vienna, and Hannover).
1951 Together with Ivan Picelj and Božidar Rašica, he has founded a group of artists and architects named Exat 51.
1952 Srnec, Picelj, and Rašica exhibited their works at the 7th Salon des Réalites Nouvelles.
1952 Srnec has executed the abstract drawing Lines, a crucial work for the development of his art.
1953 He transferred the two-dimensional play of lines into the three-dimensional body of an object called Spatial Modulator.
1956 Started to experiment with mobile sculptures and reliefs. Srnec made his first reliefs in painted wood by the end of the fifties and from 1960 onwards he began working in aluminum, other metals, and plexiglass.
1955 Srnec intensified his work with collage.
1959 Together with Ivan Picelj and Vojin Bakić, he exhibited his works at the Denise René Gallery in Paris, and in 1960 and 1961 at Drian Gallery in London.
1959 – 1960 Srnec was active collaborator of the Zagreb School of Animation, where he made three set designs for puppet films and, together with Dragutin Vunak, the animated film Man and Shadow (1960).
since 1962 The experience of working on a new medium inspired him to examine the possibilities of light in movement which led him to lumino-kinetic research.
1963 Made the film Beginnings, a series of different dynamic light patterns unified into a film.
1969 Srnec exhibited the first and the second variant of Luminoplastic and created total lumino-ambiences in which light was projected from one or more sources onto structure propelled by electric motors generating visual effects. He also filmed his luminoplastic objects (Luminoplastic 66), at the exhibition in the Contemporary Art Gallery (today’s Museum of Contemporary Art).
1974 – 1977 Srnec created kinetic sculptures in highly polished metal.
1978 Individual exhibition of the kinetic sculptures at the Nova Gallery in Zagreb.
1969 Republic Vladimir Nazor Award for Sculpture.
1971 The Josip Račić Award for Visual Arts.
1973 Second prize at the 1st Yugoslav Biennial of Small Sculpture in Murska Sobota.
1974 Sculpture award at the 9th Zagreb Salon.
1975 Grand Prix at the 3rd International Biennial of Small Sculpture in Budapest.
1999 Srnec has received the Vladimir Nazor Award for life achievement in the field of visual and applied art.
2008 Srnec was awarded with Croatian Association of Visual Artists Award for life Achievement. His retrospective was organized by Marinko Sudac collection in Varaždin in 2008 followed by its repetition as the first one man show at new building of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb in 2010. Aleksandar Srnec has passed away one month after Retrospective’s closure.
Artist Groups
Exat 51 / New Tendencies
Exhibitions
Tendencies 4 (1968), Symposium (1968) / Tendencies 4 (1969), Retrospective of NT 1 – NT3 and Recent Examples of Visual Research
References
Illustrations
aleksandar_srnec / aleksandar_srnec_young
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