OUR DEAR MARICA – CUTTING INTO THE SLJEME MOUNTAIN - REVISITED

MSU - Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb 2014

This work was a research-based intervention in the Kožarić Studio of the MSU - Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb. It referred specifically to two art works by Ivan Kožarić (1921-2020); a portrait drawing of a peasant woman entitled “Our dear Marica”, and a photomontage from 1960 proposing a cut through the Zagreb Sljeme mountain as a sculptural intervention. Ivan Kožarić was a leading figure in Croatian contemporary art for several decades; his studio was presented in the documenta 2002 while his recent exhibition-record includes Haus der Kunst, 2013, among others.

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Once could say that modernism, abstract and conceptual art dominated Croatian contemporary art and related discourses since the 1950s. Ivan Kožarić was primarily a sculptor, and although his most influential works were abstract and/or conceptual forms, interventions and proposals, his oeuvre incorporates many portraits as well. While for some we know who they were (fellow artists, intellectuals, public figures, politicians), most of them have been interpreted as formal studies and anonymous heads. I always admired this variety of faces and their social mix; different physiognomies and expressions; workers’, writers’, pop singers’, sportsmen’s, farmers’, politicians’ heads mixed all together. Kožarić had always kept his social circle wide open and would regularly go for a drink with his postman, plumber, neighbor. However, nobody ever referred to these people while talking about Kožarić’s art; conceptual aspects as well as developments within art history/discourse were always more important. The purpose of my intervention in Kožarić’s atelier was to focus on Kožarić’s figurative work and its social dimension.

The starting point for my project was a portrait drawing of a woman named Marica, who was Kožarić’s family dairywomen, and the information I heard many years ago. Somebody told me how extremely upset Kožarić was, and how he cried a lot, when he heard their dairywomen died. Marica would bring her homemade milk produce to the Kožarić family once a week for over three decades, starting in the 1960s. In a documentary film about Kožarić from the late 1980s, there is a scene with Marica in her 70s ringing the bell and bringing her goods to the Kožarić's kitchen. I decided to find out who Marica was, and where she lived.

Interviewing Kožarić, who was 92 at the time, was not a big help so I spoke with his younger friends and relatives. Kožarić remembered to have visited Marica and her family on their farm several times but he could not recall the location. My investigative journey brought me to the other side of the Zagreb Sljeme Mountain, where in the village of Gornja Bistra I finally found Marica’s family. Her name was Marija Škrlin-Batina. Based on the family photo album, we could also trace that one of Kožarić’s heads was in fact a portrait of Marica’s husband. Back in the 1960s and 1970s on Sundays, Kožarić and his wife would regularly go climb the Sljeme mountain. Occasionally, they would cross to the other side of the mountain and visit the Škrlin-Batina family. There was a friendship between the two families.

So, it happened that this work and research of mine lead to new insights and interpretations of yet another Kožarić’s artwork. “Unusual Project – Cutting Sljeme” is a relatively small photomontage from 1960, which happens to be one of the most influential art propositions in Croatian contemporary art. Published numerous times, this idea gained a mythic status, while being rather simple – it is a proposal to cut into and through the Sljeme mountain and open it towards the other side.

The result of my investigation and research was a two-channel video installation which also included a re-arrangement of part of the holdings of Atelier Kožarić whereby the portraits of anonymous people, as well as drawings with scenes from rural life, were brought forward.

Finally, members of the family of Ms. Marija Škrlin-Batina were present at the opening and met with Ivan Kožarić.