Ratko Petrić – Torso

He was born in Zadar where he also finished high school. He graduated in sculpture from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in the class of Prof. Vanja Radauš, whose workshops he also collaborated with. He is one of the founders of the Young Artists’ Salon and the legendary group “Biafra.” He is the founder and leader of the international sculpture colony in Jakovlje and the Sculpture Alley on the Sava embankment in Zagreb. He also worked as an associate professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. He has held 52 solo exhibitions and over 250 group exhibitions in total. He has around forty works in public spaces. He is the recipient of numerous awards, the most significant being the Grand Prize of the Zagreb Salon and the Vjesnik Award. In 2007, a monograph authored by a group of writers was published by the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts.

R. Petrić is the author of engaged sculpture. For Petrić, as a visual expression, it is a “spotlight” on our reality, a depiction of the present day, a perception of the world through entrenched stereotypes. Through it, he raises questions of contemporary humanism in social and cultural terms. It is a bearer of critical discourse that arouses many emotional reactions.