Croatian Naive Art

Croatian museum of Naive Art

To reach the home of Croatian naive art take the road to the city of Koprivnica, the central town of the Croatian region Podravina, spread along the Drava river.

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After visiting some old cultural monuments, as the church of St. Anthony of Padua with the Franciscan monastery, the chapel of Salvator and the Armory from 1714, take a road to Hlebine vllage.

The first mentioned in the year 1330, the village of Hlebine didnt become famous for another 600 years, until Croatian peasant art was born there. It all happened here, in still and silent landscape. Visit the gallery of the famous painters.

In Croatia the concept of the Naive assumes the work of artists who arrived from amateurism, people who are more or less self-taught, painters and sculptors who did not obtain their education by systematic training at art schools and academies, which did not, however, prevent them from creating their own style, achieving their own level of art. The Naive is a concept, just like the concepts of Expressionism, Cubism, Abstractionism, Dadaism and the Surreal and so on that we use to interrelate some of the separate worlds of modern artistic creativity.

The Croatian Museum of Naive Art holds more than 1,600 works of art paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints, mainly by Croatian artists. The most famos are:

Ivan Generali (1914-1992) the first master of the Hlebine School, and the first among the naive painters of Croatia to create a personal style and art of a high level. Others are Vranjo Mraz, Mirko Virius, Ivan Vecenaj, Mijo Kovacic, Ivan Rabuzin, Josip Generalic, Emerik Fejes and many others.

Below is a short art gallery of the most famous painters:

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