Muzej-Museo Lapidarium
We are pleased to invite you to the opening of our exhibition
Remember Picelj. Remember Knifer.
on Saturday, May 18, 2024, at 7:00 PM
Featuring British artist Shawn Stipling (workshop/performance ‘how I encountered Knifer’) and Maja Zidarić Pilat, director of the Pazin City Museum (introduction to three works by Julije Knifer from Pazin).
Ješa Denegri, Almir Mavignier, Getuilo Alviani, Manfredo Massioroni, Gallery Rigo, 2005
To commemorate the International Museum Day, Novigrad’s Lapidarium presents an exhibition from its collection, serving as a tribute to the artists Ivan Picelj and Julije Knifer, whose centenary of birth is being celebrated this year. Consequently, the exhibition is titled Remember – echoing Ivan Picelj’s iconic graphic series, his homage to the great artists of historical avantgarde, the pioneers of abstraction. Our evocation of ‘remembering’ the giants of Croatian contemporary art, the initiators of constructivist geometric painting, does not merely present a limited selection of their works; rather, it signifies a ‘memory’ of creating a new museum collection, whose beginnings are tied to the exhibitions of Julije Knifer (1997 and 2004) and Ivan Picelj (1998 and 2006) at the Rigo Gallery.
Ivan Picelj had a special connection to the gallery and Novigrad. Alongside his friend and artistic companion Getulio Alviani, he shaped the exhibition programs, which for nearly a decade bore the names of the artists of the New Tendencies movement, along with their predecessors and followers. The majority of artists who exhibited and stayed in Novigrad donated one or more artworks to the gallery collection, which gradually, through donations and purchases of recent works by domestic and foreign artists dealing with models of geometric abstraction, its theoretical and linguistic coordinates, and research into perceptual and cognitive processes, became a respectable collection worth showing. Therefore, the gallery showcases works by the following artists: Getulio Alviani, Wolfgang Berndt, and Đanino Božić, Marčelo Brajnović, Vlatko Čerić, Heiko Daxl, Robin Davourie, Stephanie De Vos, Mélissa Franchini, Ivana Franke, Duje Jurić, Janusz Kapusta, Maja Marković, Almir Mavigner, Jelena Perić, Ivan Picelj, Petra Pletikos, Marlon Red, Franz Riedel, Ivo Ringe, Heather Sheehan, Nelio Sonego, Jeffrey Steele, Jöel Stein, Shawn Stipling, Victor Vasarely, Jurgen Wolff, Bosiljka Zirojević Lečić, Beat Zoderer.
Shawn Stipling, Untitled Structure Collage, 2023, collage, MML-766
Shawn Stipling, Untitled Structure Painting (Blue/Red), 2023, acrylic on canvas, MML-765
Jeffrey Steele, SG III 129, 1999, serigraphy, MML-29
The exhibition also features nearly unknown paintings by Julije Knifer from the Pazin City Museum, alongside a curated selection of works from the exhibitions ‘Black – White in Colour: Julije Knifer: Collages’ (2004) and ‘Ivan Picelj: Surfaces BW-C’ (2006). Additionally, the exhibition is complemented by documentary materials and photographs that recount the story of ‘remembering’ Picelj’s and Knifer’s exhibitions in Novigrad, alongside highlighting other aspects of their contributions and significance to the history and contemporary relevance of the Lapidarium Museum and its Rigo Gallery Collection.
Exhibition curator: Dr. Jerica Ziherl
The exhibition is funded by the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, the City of Novigrad-Cittanova, and the Tourist Board of Novigrad-Cittanova.
