The Collection of Andro Vid Mihičić
The Collection of Andro Vid Mihičić has been integrated into the permanent exhibition of the Lošinj Museum as part of the donation that A. V. Mihičić made to the former Municipality of Cres - Lošinj. The collection includes 82 different works of art created by 42 authors, as also the A. V. Mihičić manuscripts (studies, critiques, essays, poems, diaries, etc.). Part of the collection was first displayed in the present-day gallery of the Fritzi Palace in 1993. The author of the first exhibition was Đuro Vanđura, an art historian and the former director of the Strossmayer Gallery of Old Masters. This exhibition did not last long, because the new one was set up as early as 1998. This time the author was Miroslav Gašparović, the Professor of Art History and Philosophy and Director of the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb. During the restoration of the Fritzi Palace in 2007, the third floor was rearranged and the collection was placed in a newly renovated space; the authors behind the actual exhibition setup are Miroslav Gašparović and Irena Dlaka, the former curator of the Lošinj Museum. The collection presents the Croatian artists of the 20th century, including the main representatives of the Croatian Modern Art, and two stand out among them as particularly remarkable: Emanuel Vidović and Frano Kršinić.
Andro Vid Mihičić
A. V. Mihičić (Beli, island of Cres, 1896 - Mali Lošinj, 1992) was a university professor, an art historian, art critic, essayist, poet and an intellectual. He gained broad liberal arts education through the study of theology, philosophy, art history, aesthetics and psychology. In 1911 he became a Franciscan monk and took the name Vid; however, towards the end of the Second World War he chose not to wear a religious habit because of his own political participation. In 1951, eight years after he had left the Franciscan order, he married Katarina Potočki, the woman he spent the rest of his life with. They lived in Zagreb until the beginning of the Croatian War of Independence, when they moved to the Retirement Home in Krk.
