Antun Vrlić – Reflection

About the author:

He was born in 1957 in Split, where he began his artistic journey that led him to the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. He graduated in 1982 in the class of the prominent professor Raoul Goldoni, marking the start of an impressive career spanning four decades.

He held his first solo exhibition in 1982 at the Bogdan Ogrizović Library in Zagreb, which was the beginning of a series of thirty solo presentations. Simultaneously, he participated in sixty group exhibitions both in Croatia and on the international stage. His graphic oeuvre includes three printed graphic portfolios, while in public spaces he realized significant intervention works such as the mosaic “Traces of the Alka” (1988), the ambient performance “Bethlehem – Good News” in the Church of Our Lady of Sinj (1983), and the floor mosaic in the Adam Gallery in Sinj (1989).

As a member of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists (HDLU) and the Zagreb Artistic Society (ZUH), with the status of an independent artist, Vrlić has received numerous awards for his painting, characterized by a unique visual language. Critic Vladimir Maleković noted in the 1995 exhibition catalog: “Anton Vrlić wants to witness his time in his own way. His paintings of the drama of our spaces are sensitized dramas of the image itself, crevices in the mountains and ugly rag banners hanging on them are ominous harbingers of the atrophy of objects and the abyss of nothingness.”

Even today, living and creating in Zagreb, Anton Vrlić remains true to his artistic approach, which through painting material conveys profound reflections on contemporary society and human existence. His work, which combines technical skill with conceptual depth, constitutes an important segment of the Croatian contemporary art scene.