Buntovnik s vizijom - retrospektivna izložba Vjenceslava Richtera / Rebel with a Vision – a retrospective of Vjenceslav Richter

(exhibition catalog)

Last year the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb held a retrospective exhibition in honor of architect and artist Vjenceslav Richter’s 100th birthday titled Rebel with a Vision (October 10 – December 10, 2017). Over 200 works of art, including models and plans for architectural projects, sculptures, drawings, graphic prints, and paintings were on display giving an overview of Richter’s career.

Richter (Omilje, 1917 – Zagreb, 2002) was one of the members of the EXAT 51 group (1950–56) and later of the New Tendencies movement (1961–73) both of which promoted abstract art, experimentation, and synthesis of the arts - architecture, painting, and sculpture. He was the author of the Yugoslav pavilions for international exhibitions in Brussels, Turin, and Milan which earned him international renown. He also worked in theatre as a stage designer, designed museum exhibitions, and created projects for museum buildings in Aleppo, Sarajevo, Belgrade, Skopje, and Krapina.

As an architect, he integrated the principles of constructivism and functionalism in the public and residential buildings he designed, and in his theoretical work, he put emphasis on the social role of architecture and how it can improve the quality of living. By envisioning life in the super cities of the future he developed the idea of Synthurbanism and later of Heliopolis. He explored the ‘system’ in graphics, painting, and sculpture – for example, system sculpture which was characterized by a great number of movable mono-elements when translated on a large scale led to the concept of system architecture.

A bilingual Croatian/English catalog of the exhibition contains fifteen extensive texts by architectural theorists, art historians and other professionals who have over the years researched Richter’s work in the fields of architecture and visual arts. The complexity of conservation and restoration of Richter’s oeuvre is also covered as well as the topic of the artist’s library, which was donated to the city of Zagreb along with his archival material, works of art, and the family house. This 440-page publication, illustrated with 235 images is edited by Martina Munivrana and Vesna Meštrić and designed by Aleksandra Mudrovčić. Authors of the texts: Ivica Čović, Rika Devos, Igor Ekštajn, Günther Holler-Schuster, Zrinka Ivković, Mil de Kooning, Vladimir Kulić, Lovorka Magaš Bilandžić, Zvonko Maković, Vesna Meštrić, Maroje Mrduljaš, Martina Munivrana, Mirta Pavić, Šime Perović, Snježana Pintarić, Ivan Rupnik, Karin Šerman, Leila Topić.

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