Kauzlarić Atač Zlatko – Finally His Own

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 with 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 currently works as a full professor and was dean for a period of time. Besides painting and graphic arts, he intensely engaged in scenography and costume design, collaborating on about a hundred theatre projects domestically 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, authored by Tonko Maroević. He has received numerous awards for painting and scenography and the Order of Danica for merits in culture. His existence in the fields of painting has been marked by works – initially created during his involvement with the group ‘Biafra’ (since 1970), portraits of well-known persons in expressive movement, nudes, and numerous self-nudes. From the very beginning, the author inherits a sense of expression of the moment, rhythm, movement, and characteristic artistic engagement. His current painterly preoccupation is nudes submerged in water, where drawing is replaced by the dominance of pure painterly treatment of the surface with color, revealing the virtuosity of a skilled master who does not suppress expression with figurative articulation.