Kauzlarić Atač Zlatko – Portrait of a Friend

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 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 currently works as a full professor and for a time also served as dean. Alongside painting and graphics, he intensely engaged in scenography and costume design, collaborating on about a hundred theatre projects both domestically and internationally, as well as several film and television projects. He is also the author of several visual interventions in public spaces. In 1996, a monograph signed by Tonko Maroević was published about him. He is the recipient of many awards for painting and scenography, as well as the Order of Danica for cultural merit. Atačevo’s existence in the fields of painting has been marked by works—those first created during his activities within the group “Biafra” (from 1970), portraits of well-known figures in expressive motion, nudes, and numerous self-nudes. From the very beginning, the artist has inherited a sense for the expression of the moment, rhythm, movement, and characteristic artistic engagement. His current painterly preoccupation is with 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 representation.