Julije Knifer – Meanders without bounds
Art Encounters — Casa Isho, Timișoara — 5 septembre-12 octobre 2024
Julije Knifer (1924, Osijek, Croatia – 2004, Paris) is one of the key personalities of the Croatian avant-garde in the second half of the 20th century. In 1948, Yugoslavia broke its ties with the Soviet Union, one of the significant effects of which was the switch from socialist realism to modernist abstraction. In the sixth decade, art focused on formal experimentation, projecting an image of enlightened liberalism as a counterpoint to Soviet dogmatism. From the 1960s onwards, Knifer's work concentrated on exploring a single form – the meander, which he had been using for several years and which subsequently became the central element of his artistic output. He was also the artist who produced the second issue of the “antimagazine”Gorgona. The artist arrived at the meander because he wanted to reach the essential by renouncing all unnecessary elements. His works explore the relationship between the suggestion of infinite repetition of the motif and the limits of the canvas. The meandering river is an ancient motif seen as a symbol of the eternal flow of life, but for Knifer it has become the key to a timeless world and a way to create works that transcend themselves. The artist has dedicated his life to this simple form. The study of absence, essentialization and complete perfection of execution reveal an artist who found a meditative source in the process of painting until the last days of his life. This unique theme of repetition of the purest and simplest form is a transcription of timeless existence, creating a powerful aesthetic that emerges from all the works.
Between 1951 and 1957, Knifer attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, where he discovered nonfigurative as well as Russian suprematism, especially the work of Kazimir Malevich, which had a major influence on his early career. In 1959, he cofounded the Zagreb-based protoconceptual group Gorgona. Rather than an artistic program, the group's members were bound by what they called the “Gorgona spirit”, a nihilist stance inspired by existentialist philosophy and the example of the local pre-war avant-garde. Their most important collective project was Gorgona, which published eleven artist-designed issues – including contributions from Dieter Roth and Harold Pinter – before the group disbanded in 1966. Gorgona was internationalist in both its core activities and its ethos. The group's archives reveal regular exchanges between Croatian artists and their international contemporaries including Lucio Fontana, Robert Rauschenberg and Piero Manzoni. François Morellet, Piero Dorazio and Victor Vasarely also exhibited with Gorgona at the first “New Tendencies”, an international exhibition in Zagreb in 1961. Moreover, Knifer represented Croatia at the Venice Biennale in 2001, and in 2014 the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb organized a comprehensive retrospective of his work. He has exhibited at the Pompidou Center in Paris, MAMCO in Geneva and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. His works can be found in numerous private and public collections around the world, including MoMA in New York, Tate in London, Pompidou Center in Paris and the National Gallery in Berlin.
The exhibition benefited from the invaluable help of Ana Knifer, to whom we are extremely grateful.