Antun Vrlić – Untitled

About the author:

He was born in 1957 in Split, where he began his artistic journey that would lead him to the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. He graduated in 1982 in the class of the distinguished professor Raoul Goldoni, which marked the beginning of an impressive career spanning four decades.

He held his first solo exhibition in 1982 at the Bogdan Ogrizović Library in Zagreb, marking the start of a series of thirty solo presentations. Concurrently, he participated in sixty group exhibitions both in Croatia and on the international stage. His graphic output includes three printed graphic portfolios, while in public spaces he realized significant intervention works such as the mosaic “Tragovi alke” (1988), the ambient performance “Bethlehem – Good News” in the Church of Our Lady of Sinj (1983), and the floor mosaic at the Adam Gallery in Sinj (1989).

As a member of the Croatian Association of Visual Artists (HDLU) and the Zagreb Artistic Society (ZUH), with the status of an independent artist, Vrlić has received numerous awards for his painting, distinguished by a unique visual language. Critic Vladimir Maleković noted in the 1995 exhibition catalog: “Anton Vrlić wishes to testify to his time in his own way. His paintings of the dramas of our spaces are a sensitized drama of the image itself; incisions in the mountains and ugly flags of rags hung on them are ominous heralds of the atrophy of objects and the abyss of nothingness.”

Even today, living and creating in Zagreb, Anton Vrlić remains faithful to his artistic approach, which through painterly material conveys deep reflections on contemporary society and human existence. His work, which combines technical skill with conceptual depth, represents an important segment of the Croatian contemporary art scene.