Kauzlarić Atač Zlatko – Relaxed Friends

He was born in 1945 in Koprivnica. After finishing high school, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. During his studies, he joined the work of the Student Experimental Theatre. He graduated in the class of Professor Miljenko Stančić and immediately became a collaborator in the master workshop of Professor K. Hegedušić. In 1973, he became an assistant at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, where he still works as a full professor and was dean for some time. Besides painting and graphics, he is intensively involved in scenography and costume design, having collaborated on about a hundred theatre projects in the country and abroad, as well as several film and television projects. He is also the author of several visual interventions in public spaces. In 1996, a monograph about him was published, signed by Tonko Maroević. He has received many awards for painting and scenography, as well as the Order of Danica for merits in culture. Atac’s existence in the field of painting was marked by works – those first created during his involvement with the “Biafra” group (from 1970), portraits of famous people in expressive motion, nudes, and numerous self-nudes. From the very beginning, the author inherited a sense for the expression of the moment, rhythm, movement, and characteristic artistic engagement. His current painting preoccupation is nudes immersed in water, where drawing is replaced by the dominance of pure painterly treatment of the surface with color, revealing the virtuosity of a master who does not suppress expression with figurative expression.