In the Museums of the city of Karlovac, on the eve of Statehood Day, an exhibition Air Show of prominent Croatian painter and graphic artist Anabel Zanza was opened in the Museum of the Homeland War in Karlovac - Turanj.
The artistic work of the Dubrovnik woman Anabel Zanza has been in the works for thirty years and is characterized by creation in rounded cycles. Processuality is important in her creative method, which at the same time means the arduousness of being in the picture, the courage to finish what has been started and not giving up on the effort to realize the idea for its own sake, for the sake of the work and for the sake of those who will observe the work and recognize parts of their experiences and feelings in it.
An essential component of Anabela's creativity is also archiving, which communicates personal preferences towards phenomena and personalities from the world of art and all-time social phenomena related to them by storing them in pictures. Zanze is a representative of painterly letrism. In her work, the leitmotif is a letter. Latin, adapted in type and size to the painter's imagined concept, is sometimes part of a whole: a word or a text, and - sometimes - the representation of the whole word is the key to "reading" the work.
Anabel Zanze does not give up on letters even in the series of Aeromiting collages, which we are exhibiting on the occasion of celebrating Statehood Day at the Homeland War Museum in Karlovac - Turanj. The artist started work on that cycle in the pandemic year of 2020. We highlight the picture Aeromiting 7 from 2023, which is dedicated to the heroes of the Homeland War and the Ukrainian people's resistance to Russian aggression.
In the "Aeromitting" cycle, Anabel's collages are dynamic, they bring a moment that has already passed. Her collages embody the expressive possibilities of the artistic features of cut surfaces within the famous Anabel's palette, which consists of neutral colors - white, black, and gray and colors - red, ocher, and ivory. She intervenes in the collages with black ink and corrective bleach, so the pieces printed with a printing machine are refined with her painterly gesture. On some of the compositions, the silhouettes of airplanes are wittily drawn, on some of them you can read a fragment of a name or word that the author refers to one of her works, and if you are meeting her works for the first time, the experience of her works in the viewer causes the need to research the meaning of the work and the author's interests.
The works created within the Aeromiting cycle are filled with closed but intimate and autobiographical content, but the presence of universal questions is also noticeable: do these planes fly to show the beauty of the skill of fearless pilots or give us the task to think about our smallness in time and space.
The prefect of Karlovac County, Martina Furdek Hajdin, the mayor of Karlovac, Damir Mandić, prominent Croatian art historian Igor Zidić, and the owner of Orbic, Branko Roglić, spoke at the exhibition.
The curators of the exhibition are museum advisor Antonija Škrtić and senior curator Ružica Stjepanović. The catalog of the exhibition contains texts by theorist Igor Zidić, author Anabel Zanza and one of the curators of the exhibition, Antonija Škrtić, who is also the editor of the catalog.
The exhibition remains open until October 8, 2023, and is financially supported by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia and the City of Karlovac.
The opening of the exhibition is part of the program of the City of Karlovac and Karlovac County, which will mark Statehood Day. On Tuesday, May 30, on Statehood Day, the Museum of the Homeland War Karlovac - Turanj will host an open day during which visitors will be able to view the museum and the newly opened exhibition Anabel Zanze: Aeromiting for free from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
