The exhibition "Vojin Bakić: The Principle of Hope", opened at the City Museum in Bjelovar on the occasion of the 110th anniversary of the birth of one of the most significant artists of the 20th century in Croatia, is the first comprehensive presentation of Bakić's life and work in his hometown after more than 60 years, and starts from the question of what the artist's work means today at a time of intensified historical revisionism and systemic suppression of public memory.
Living and working in conditions of war, political upheaval and profound social transformations, Bakić developed an artistic language whose thematic foundation is formed by ideas of solidarity, collective responsibility and hope for a more just society. His practice was deeply marked by the murder of four younger brothers in the Jadovno concentration camp system, but despite this he did not accept hopelessness: his sculptures persistently searched for a form that could express the conviction that such violence must never be repeated.
Curator of the exhibition Hana Curak she designed the concept in dialogue with the collective What, how and for whom/WHW (Ivet Ćurlin, Natasa Ilic i Sabina Sabolovic) through the inclusion of contemporary artistic positions in the exhibition, and at the opening she reminded that Bakić is one of the key figures of modernism, but also an author whose monumental legacy in public space has been systematically devastated and suppressed. It is precisely this gap between recognition and oblivion that was the starting point for the exhibition.
Hana Ćurak emphasized that the anti-fascist ideas in his work do not survive as nostalgia, but as permanent coordinates directed against ethnically motivated violence, the organizers announced.
The curatorial concept was designed from the perspective of future anthropology, a discipline that explores how our expectations and hopes for the future shape the present.
Permanently focused on the exploration of volume, space and material, Bakić's oeuvre has evolved from the figuration of the late 1950s towards radically abstract forms in which geometry and light meet. During World War II, he experienced a severe family tragedy - the Ustashas killed four of his brothers, after which he worked all his life on monuments to the victory over fascism. His brothers, incidentally, were imprisoned in the basement of the building that today houses the Bjelovar City Museum.
The exhibition starts from this experience of loss and the question of how, without pathos and subsequent consolation, one can think of responsibility towards the future.
In this sense, Bakić's art is brought into dialogue with the philosophy of hope. Ernsta Bloha and his work The principle of hope, created in exile from Nazi Germany. Bakić's oeuvre is revealed through three key gaps: the first relates to archival violence and physical erasure, visible in the devastation of monumental sculpture in Kamenska, Gudovac, Bjelovar, Čazma and elsewhere during the wave of nationalism in the 1990s; the second to the neutralization and aestheticization of modernism, which reduces the oeuvre to a formal language, separating it from the social relations and historical experience from which it grew; the third, however, involves the subject himself - the person of Vojin Bakić, a witty and unobtrusive artist, marked by family losses and a willingness to take radical aesthetic risks.
The exhibition presented the Bakić family's turbulent history for the first time, as well as large-format works that have never been publicly exhibited, such as a restored sculpture Simultaneity, large wooden Torza, To Shape, reduced animal forms of hollowed-out full volume made of wood and plaster from Bakić's animal phase, brought from Gršćica on Korčula, where he had a summer studio.
The exhibition spans three levels of the Museum, providing an overview of key phases of Bakić's work, with an emphasis on cycles. Luminous forms (1963-1968) and Leafy forms (1958). The exhibition also includes works from the collection of the Bjelovar City Museum, including fragments of the mined Monument to the Shot/Call to Uprising from 1947, erected in memory of Bakić's brother. SlobodanThe replica was returned to the Borik Memorial Park in 2010 through the joint efforts of family, friends, and institutions.
Emphasizing the importance of subjectivity and process, the selection and installation of sculptures by female architects Anna Martina i Faith Bakic, the artist's granddaughters and heirs of his oeuvre, do not function as a mere representative or didactic cross-section of artistic cycles. In dialogue with the curator's reading, the exhibition is also constructed as a subtle personal and socially marked inscription of the principle of hope in material, space and fragmentary memory.
Three contemporary artistic positions - David Maljković, Saree Salamon i Miloš Trakilović, in the exhibition, take the fundamental tensions of Bakić's oeuvre and translate them into experiences that belong to the digital present.
By purchasing the birthplace of Vojin Bakić in 2025, the City of Bjelovar opened the possibility of the permanent presence of his work in a future space in the immediate vicinity of the Bjelovar City Museum.
Ana Martina and Vjera Bakić, successors of Bakić's oeuvre, who interpreted and spatially elaborated the curatorial concept, emphasized that hope in Bakić's work is understood as an active principle sublimated into a permanent artistic search for the ideal form of victory over fascism, and that the exhibition does not offer a single narrative, but rather opens a space in which meanings are re-established through sculptures, drawings, archival material and dialogue with the works of contemporary artists David Maljković, Sara Salamon and Miloš Trakilović.
Since the last exhibition of this scope was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb in 2014, Bakić emphasized on the occasion of the Bjelovar exhibition the importance of a direct, physical encounter with sculpture, especially for younger generations who have not had the opportunity to get to know the artist's work on a larger scale, and the renovation of the Bakić House, which will become a reference place for researching his oeuvre, as well as a permanent space for its presentation.
Museum Director Marijana Dragicevic She pointed out at the opening that the exhibition is not only about the past, but also about the decision for Bjelovar to be a city that recognizes the value of art, does not shy away from complexity, and understands that both hope and art are always an act of conscious choice.
Mayor Dario Hrebak announced continued cooperation with the Bakić family after Bjelovar purchased the artist's birthplace in the city center, emphasizing that Bakić's oeuvre would be nurtured in the broader context of the Bjelovar art scene, which includes Edo Murtic, Nasta Rojc, Branko Vlahovic i Ivo FriščićIn cooperation with the Bjelovar City Museum, selected large-format photographs by the author were also displayed at the Bakić House, in the immediate vicinity of the exhibition. Tose Dabac.
Special Advisor to the President of Croatia for Culture Zdravko Zima He pointed out that the exhibition repays the civilizational and moral debt to the great artist, and the representative of the Ministry of Culture and Media Nevena Tudor Perkovic She said that the Ministry recognizes the exhibition as an example of a responsible and comprehensive relationship towards cultural heritage, which includes not only research and exhibition, but also the creation of fundamental conditions for its preservation and presentation.
Vojin Bakić (Bjelovar, 1915 - Zagreb, 1992) is one of the most important and internationally recognized Croatian sculptors of the 20th century. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, in the class of Frano Kršinić and specialized in Ivan Meštrović.
He is the author of a series of monumental monuments in Kamenska, Dotrščina, Valjevo, Petrova Gora and Kragujevac. Since the 1950s he has participated in important international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale, Documenta in Kassel and EXPO 58 in Brussels.
His work, marked by post-war devastation and changes in political regimes, is now one of the key chapters of modernist sculpture and the regional heritage of memory.
The exhibition was realized in partnership with the City of Bjelovar and the Bjelovar City Museum, with the support of the Glyptotheque of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, the National Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Rijeka, the Faculty of Agriculture in Zagreb, the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of Croatia, and the Ministry of Defense of Croatia.
The honorary patrons of the exhibition are the President of Croatia and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
The exhibition is open until April 18.
(SEEcult.org)
Bonus video:
