Exhibition „Letters to Mihičić"

Exhibition

„Letters to  Mihičić: an insight into artists’autographs  from the Collection of Andro Vid and Katarina Mihičić”

May 30 - September 1, 2019

The Fritzi Palace, Mali Lošinj

Andro Vid Mihičić (Beli on the island Cres, March 26, 1896 – Mali Lošinj, January 26, 1992), a Croatian art historian, poet, an art critic a theorist and full professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, he gained broad humanistic education by studying theology,  philosophy, art history, aesthetics and psychology. He became a friar and took the religious name of  Vid in 1911 and then began his novitiate in Kopar. From 1914, he attended higher classes of grammar  school and then studied philosophy and theology in Zadar, on the isle of Badija near Korčula and in Dubrovnik. From 1919 until he went to study in Paris in 1924, he began his research in the field of art. Also he devoted himself entirely to poetry and publishing poems. In 1924,  the archaeologist and historian Frane Bulić gave an opportunity  for professional development to 28-year old  Mihičić when he recived scholarship to study at the Sorbonne University located in the cultural, intellectual, political and economic centre of the French capital.

In the legacy of the Lošinj Museum, within the Collection of Andro Vid and Katarina Mihičić, along with artworks of renowned artists of the 20th century, extensive written and pictorial archival materials have been preserved. It is a rich heterogeneous corpus of manuscripts of versatile Andro Vid Mihičić (Beli on the island of Cres, March 26, 1896 - Mali Lošinj, January 26, 1992). A collection inside the collection includes Mihičić's archive materials containing private and intimate, business and official, scientific and professional materials whose significance surpasses the perception of papers merely as a collection of historical records and documents. The Mihičić collection contains a series of different written materials, most of which are manuscripts: letters, postcards, greeting cards, telegrams, critiques, essays, periodicals, aphorisms, poems, polemics, reviews, art studies, diaries, calendars, various notebooks and many other valuable texts densely written on even the smallest piece of paper. All varieties of printed matter have also been preserved, such as newspaper articles on culture and art, photographs, art reproductions, drawings, paintings, visual notes, business cards, invitations and exhibition catalogues. Paper bundles include Mihičić's papers, legal documents, certificates, diplomas, various acts and other private materials. A rich segment of the epistolary heritage to which the exhibition and the catalogue have been dedicated  represents a personal correspondence between Croatian artists, writers and numerous cultural workers with Andro Vid Mihičić, which took place from the mid-1920s to the late 1980s.