Exhibition Hommage to Nenad Levinger (1947. – 2008.)

Lošinj Museum, in Gallery Fritzi, on May 23 at 7 pm, opens an exhibition Hommage Nenadu Levingeru (1947. – 2008.) that  marks the 10th anniversary of the death and the 71st birthday of this Lošinj artist with fruitful painting career who deserves a place in island past and present because of his artistic creativity. Ten years have passed since Levinger left not only the starting point of his art story - Lošinj, but also this world in which he devoted emotions through instantaneous approach to painting and drawing, thus creating artworks over more than forty-five years. Recalling the numerous paintings of self-taught Nenad Levinger, it is necessary to unequivocally underline the artistic values ​​of canonized landscapes and (self) portraits he was known for in public. Homage to Nenad Levinger (1947. – 2008.) is an exhibition presenting a cycle of watercolour miniatures and abstract action paintings, with several self-portraits displayed, in which Levinger mentally and emotionally surpassed his previous painting and embarked on a new world of artistic sensibility, a world of imminent symbolic subject matter. Their thematic framework manifests sacred and profane preoccupations. Personal art evolution, whose starting point is the vision of nature and the spiritual world, had always been focused on the authentic expression layered content. Levinger summed up the changes of the Island and of his own style through duality of the co-existence of figurative and abstract painting language. Unique and persistent, skilful and free, Nenad Levinger always created fresh perception of things that were important to him, using his own artistic imagination to go beyond everyday life on the island. It is the path where he gradually dissolves form, transforming his micromotivism into new concepts, thus approaching to the modern expression and practice of modernity. The skill of mirroring the emotional desires of his visualistics, his body of work of undeniable artistic values, expresses all the commitment of Nenad Levinger to his artistic habitus.

Nenad Levinger was born on June 12, 1947 in Sveti Ivan Žabno near Križevci (Croatia). To become a painter was a dream of the eight-year-old boy whose family moved often during the 1950’s. In 1961, the Levinger family settled in Lošinj; in the same year Nenad shortly attended the School of Applied Arts in Zagreb. He abandoned formal education and took private lessons to eventually become “his own master”. He held his first solo exhibition in Mali Lošinj the following year, in 1962.. In the early years of Levinger's painting in Lošinj, he was observed by Erich Kuby, a German journalist, an art critic and a publicist, who in the following years traced and helped foster his artistic development. Levinger remained a free-spirited and creative painter and a drawer, an individual of artistic sensibility who felt the creative urge already in his childhood, predicting his own life path. In 1976 he married Blaženka Levinger - Herceg and soon had a son Zvjezdan born in 1977. He lived with his family in Veli Lošinj where he opened his painting studio - the Levinger Gallery in 1979; he created and exhibited his works there until the end of his life in 2008. The significant moment in his artistic career happened at his first international exhibition in Trento in 1983; it was organized by the Italian watercolour artist Tullio Gaspero. During his creative period he displayed his paintings in more than a hundred solo and group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad. The artistic journey that formed Nenad Levinger as a painter we remember was not easy. Through a whole range of art techniques - pencil, ink, pastel, colour pencil, charcoal, chalk or watercolour, he successfully experimented with colour, shape, line and composition. He became a member of HDLU Rijeka (Croatian Association of Visual Artists) as late as 2002. He participated in many charity auctions at home and abroad and was included in several books and publications. The works of Nenad Levinger are now in private and public collections in Croatia and worldwide, as also in his family home in Veli Lošinj. The artistic work of Nenad Levinger covers more than forty-five years of creativity during which, despite the absence of academic education, he became a respected painter in Croatian and foreign art circles.

The exhibition will be open for visitors by June 9, 2018. Fritzi Gallery working hours - from Tuesday to Friday from 10am to 1pm and from 6pm to 8pm, Saturdays from 10am to 1am.