Zoran Mušič

Zoran Mušič (February 12 1909 - May 25 2005) was a Slovene painter.

Life

Zoran Mušič was born in a Slovene-speaking family in Bukovica, a village in the Vipava Valley near Gorizia, in what was then the Austrian County of Gorizia and Gradisca (now in Slovenia). Mušič's father was headmaster of the local school, while his mother was a teacher. Both parents were Slovenes from the Goriška region: his father was from Šmartno, a village in the Collio hills and his mother was born in a village Kostanjevica near Kanal ob Soči.

During the Battles of the Isonzo, the family fled to Arnače near Velenje, where Zoran attended elementary school. In 1918, towards the end of the First World War, the family moved back to Gorizia, but they were expulsed again by the Italian authorities that had occupied the Julian March. They moved to Grebinj in Carinthia, but they were expulsed again by the Austrian authorities after the Carinthian Plebiscite in October 1920. They finally settled in the Yugoslav Lower Styria. Zoran attended high school in Maribor. Between 1930 and 1935 he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.

After graduation in 1935 Mušič travelled extensively. He spent six months in Madrid, he visited Vienna and Dalmatia several times while being based in Maribor and Hoče. He moved to Ljubljana in 1940. During this period (1942), he painted several churches in the Goriška region, together with his friend Avgust Černigoj (Drežnica, Grahovo). In October 1943 he moved to Venice and Trieste / Trst. In November 1944, he was sent by the Nazis to the Dachau concentration camp, where he made 200 sketches of life in the camp under extremely difficult circumstances. From the drawings executed in May 1945, he managed to save around seventy. After liberation by Americans in 1945, Mušič returned to Ljubljana, but was subjected to the pressures of the newly established Communist regime and moved to Gorizia already at the end of June 1945. In October 1945 he settled in Venice. In September 1949 he married Ida Cadorin - Barbarigo.

In 1956 he won the first prize at the Venice Biennale. In 1951 and 1952 he was awarded the Prix de Paris, (jointly with Antonio Corpora in 1951). After 1952 he lived in Paris for a while, where the 'lyrical abstraction' of the French Informel determined the art world. Throughout this period he kept his studio in Venice and exhibited again at the Biennale in 1956 and 1960, when he was awarded the Grand Prize for his graphic work and the UNESCO Prize. The much acclaimed series 'We are not the Last', in which the artist transformed the terror of his experiences in the concentration camp into documents of universal tragedy, was made in the 1970s.

In 1981 Mušič was appointed "Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres" in Paris. Mušič's work has been honoured in numerous international exhibitions, such as the large retrospective exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1995, opened by the French and Slovenian presidents Francois Mitterand and Milan Kučan.

He died in Venice in 2005 at the age of 96. He is buried in the local St. Michele cemetery.

Museums and Galleries

Austria
*Albertina, Vienna
*Sammlung Essl, Klosterneuburg

Croatia
*Galerija Moderne umjetnosti, Zagreb
*Muzej moderne i sodobne umjetnosti, Rijeka

France
*Musée des Beaux-Arts, Caen
*Musée national d´art moderne, Paris
*Musée des Beaux-Arts André Malraux, Le Havre
*Musée de Valence, Valence

Germany
*Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach
*Museum Folkwang, Essen

Italy
*Galleria d´Arte Moderna, Bologna
*Galleria internazionale d'Arte Moderna Ca' Pesaro, Venice
*Galleria Nazionale, Rome
*GaMeC gallery, Bergamo
*Musei Provinciali di Gorizia, Gorizia
*Museo Morandi, Bologna
*Museo Revoltella, Trieste

Israel
*Yad Vashem museum, Jerusalem

Netherland
*Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Slovenia
*Belokranjski muzej, Metlika
*Galerija Vena Pilona, Ajdovščina
*Goriški muzej Kromberk, Galerija Zorana Mušiča, Dobrovo
*Koroška galerija likovnih umetnosti, Slovenj Gradec
*Mestni muzej Ljubljana, Ljubljana
*Moderna galerija Ljubljana, Ljubljana
*Muzej novejše zgodovine, Ljubljana
*National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana
*Umetnostna galerija, Maribor

Spain
*Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
*Collecio IVAM, Valencia

Sweden
*Museum, Stockholm

Switzerland
*Kunstmuseum, Basel
*Musée Jenisch, Vevey

United Kingdom
*Estorick Collection, London
*Tate Modern, London

United States
*Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco
*MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge
*Museum of Modern Art, New York
*Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh

External links

* [http://www.zoran-music.com/ Zoran Mušič web page]
* [http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ArtistWorks?cgroupid=999999961&artistid=1685&page=1 Tate Online]
* [http://www.gnomiz.it/nexus/arte00/music.htm]
* [http://www.maxime-groosman.com/index.php?id=works&artist=music--zoran Maxime Groosman] / Gallery selling works by Zoran Music