Kauzlarić Atač Zlatko – Self-portrait

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 Students’ Experimental Theatre. He graduated in the class of Professor Miljenko Stančić and immediately became an associate 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 also dean for a period. In addition to painting and graphics, he is intensely engaged in scenography and costume design, collaborating on around a hundred theatre projects both 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 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. Atać’s existence in the realms of painting has been marked by works—the first created during his involvement with the group “Biafra” (from 1970), portraits of famous individuals caught in expressive movement, 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 painting preoccupation is with nudes immersed in water, in which 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 through figurative expression.