Kauzlarić Atač Zlatko – On the Beach

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 became involved in the work of the Student Experimental Theatre. He graduated in the class of Prof. Miljenko Stančić and immediately became a collaborator in the master workshop of Prof. K. Hegedušić, and 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 a period. Alongside painting and graphics, he intensively engaged in scenography and costume design, collaborating on about one hundred theater projects both domestically and abroad, as well as several film and television productions. He is also the author of several visual interventions in public spaces. In 1996, a monograph authored by Tonko Maroević was published about him. He has received numerous awards for painting and scenography and the Order of Danica for merits in culture. Atac’s existence in the fields of painting has been marked by works — those first created during his involvement with the group “Biafra” (from 1970), portraits of notable figures in expressive movement, nudes, and numerous self-portraits. From the very beginning, the author has inherited a sense for the expression of the moment—rhythm, movement—and characteristic artistic engagement. His current painterly preoccupation are nudes submerged in water, where drawing is replaced by the dominance of pure painterly treatment of the surface with color, revealing all the virtuosity of a master who does not suppress expression with figurative articulation.