EROS AND THANATOS

Tomislav Ostoja's impressive artistic oeuvre can be divided into several parts. Decades of creation, up to today's advanced years worthy of all respect, have resulted in numerous works firmly integrated into modern and contemporary Croatian art. One exhibition can hardly present all of Ostoja's sculptural and painting interests, so this one is concentrated on the last twenty or so years of sculptural and ten years of painting. Tomislav Ostoja is a sculptor by primary vocation, a visual genre that is emphatically present in the first sections of his oeuvre, stylistically different from the works in this exhibition (in terms of the structure of the surface of the volume, the materials used, and even the motifs). Later, he also devoted considerable attention to painting, creating works of true artistic power and originality. There is a dialogue between the visual genres, with a certain closeness in design, although Ostoja cherishes the expressive peculiarities of each of them, with the genesis of sculpture being more strongly present in painting than vice versa.

With both discretion and positive intrusiveness, under the common denominator of artistic enthusiasm, Ostoja introduces into his works, while partially following the principle of classical painting (in the full breadth of that concept), the unrest inherent in the destruction of the conventional. The "narrative" of abstract form bears the signature of personal worlds, with a reasonable chorus (only in some cases) of traces of the ornamental, in the function of construction, not decoration. This is more emphasized in the purified parts of the painting, in the expanses of airless silence, with the already mentioned feeling of metaphysics, the "uniform" of stopped time. In works of attractiveness at first glance, but also of fine and intellectual aesthetics, with the gradual discovery of content variants and epithets, Ostoja confirms himself as an excellent painter, most often with the beginning of the work in the flexibility of a melodious or harsh drawing. Ostoja is a painter of discipline, with carefully executed outlines, mostly with uniform application of paint, but also with occasional indulgence in greater freedom of gestural strokes.

The creative duality of sculptor and painter is not unknown in Croatian modern art; let us recall only some of the generations close to him (some only for excursions, some for longer stays), such as Branko Ružić, Marija Ujević Galetović, Valerij Michielij, Zvonko Lončarić, Zlatko Bourek, Vasko Lipovac, Šime Perić… Today, such situations are much more common, the boundaries between them are looser, and the phenomenon of visual art is different in a series of numerous, loud artistic trends. Tomislav Ostoja, in the time of his creation, connects more than six decades – from early works of figurative character, realism imbued with expressionistic treatment of form, to the brilliant achievements presented at this exhibition.

Tomislav Ostoja was born in Split on August 20, 1931, into a large family, the seventh of eight children. The family moved from Brač to Split, where Tomislav attended primary school, which he partially continued on Brač during the war. He continued his education at the Classical Gymnasium in Split, which he attended until his junior high school graduation, and then enrolled in the School of Applied Arts, in the graphics department, and switched to sculpture in the second year. After graduating from the School of Applied Arts in Split, he went to Zagreb, where in 1952 he began studying sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts. During his studies, his professors were: Grga Antunac in the first year, Vjekoslav Rukljač in the second and third, Frane Kršinić in the fourth, and Professor Antun Augustinčić in the fifth, with whom he graduated in 1957 and completed a two-year master's specialty. Professor Augustinčić invited him to his Master's Workshop, and after the first year of his special education in 1960, he transferred to the workshop, where he would spend the next six years in an exceptionally creative period of work alongside his colleagues Orčić, Štambuk, Janjčić, and Herljević.

After leaving Augustinčić's Master Workshop, Ostoja found his Zagreb workspace in the courtyard of Medulićeva Street 12, where several modestly sized houses had already been made available to his fellow painters and sculptors. Thus, this courtyard in the center of Zagreb became the place where numerous works of art that are indispensable in Croatian fine arts were created. Tomislav Ostoja's studio was always his only workplace. He never sought refuge in the civil service or enjoyed the benefits of permanent employment. He has been a freelance artist for more than five decades and makes a living from his artistic work.

Ostoja's creative fortissimo, accompanied by numerous solo and group exhibitions and successes with critics and the public, was interrupted in the late 1990s by the painful loss of his loved ones. His only son Goran died in 1998, and his wife Đurđica, who had been a great support to him in his life and work (together they also signed the authorship of the monument in Vukovar), died in 2001, devastated by grief and illness. Years had to pass before Ostoja returned to work, more as a painter than as a sculptor. The mobilization of his creative energy was significantly stimulated by invitations to solo exhibitions in Split, Brač and Zagreb, which were followed by Ostoja's large and numerous donations (Supetar, Zagreb, Postira and Čapljina), as the crowning glory of his life and artistic independence.