Ivan Balažević – Untitled

He was born in 1949 in Tavankut. He graduated in 1968 from GTŠC in Subotica, Department of Architecture. He graduated in ’97 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in the class of Prof. Marijan Detoni. Since 1985, he has held the status of an independent artist. He is a member of the Croatian Association of Independent Artists, the Croatian Society of Visual Artists Rijeka branch, and the Association of Applied Arts Artists of Croatia. He has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions. He is a laureate of significant awards (the prize for graphics at the ALU student exhibition, the prize for tapestry in Kawasaki, the Annual HDLUR award, the City of Rijeka Award for contribution to the visual life of Rijeka, the City of Novi Vinodolski Award for visual contribution to the city, and many others). He lives and works in Novi Vinodolski.

“Painter Ivan Balažević has, over the past decades, clarified his position on the contemporary Croatian scene. This position can be read through the versatile artist’s interest realized in various visual techniques and media, and of course, through the aesthetic principles decisively promoted in the author’s interpretation… And the true foundation of this creativity is not only recognized through the numerous procedures and various visual means with which he paints the surface with a brush, or ‘draws’ it with his sharpened blade, some other tool, expert dripping, and splashing of paint… but in the cultivated exploration of that language in the context of postmodernist postulates, writing its possibilities as the password of his expression.” (Milan Bešlić)