The exhibition was officially opened on Wednesday, July 16, in the packed University Gallery in Split Campus. It features works by one of the most important graphic artists of the 20th century — Virgilije Nevjestić — titled "Graphic Art - Metamorphosis of a Dream." This exhibition, comprising around seventy works created from 1963 to late 1980s, offers an exceptional and suggestive overview of artist's creativity, from early black-and-white graphics to richly colourful aquatint.
Author of the visual setup and exhibition’s curator is art historian Snježana Pintarić Ph.D., who emphasizes Nevjestić's ability to create entire worlds rich in symbolism and narration with a refined visual language of figuration — occasionally foraying into abstraction. Selecting works, she relied on the artist’s rich estate from his family collection, carefully choosing pieces that best testify to Nevjestić’s artistic evolution and experimental nature.
It is very interesting that in Nevjestić's work, continuous development is evident, and at the same time, something quite rare — the recurrence of certain motifs throughout an entire decade, in variations. For example, he uses same motifs in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, but always gives them new life through collages, patchworks, and combinations of different forms. He often made small graphics in shapes of circles, which he later incorporated into drawings or larger compositions. He played with geometry, with circles, rectangles, squares, from which he would create new wholes. All of this resembles a visual diary in which childhood, schooling, European cultural context, and Paris are constantly intertwining.
Circle holds a special place in his work. It frequently appears as the sun, the moon, or a symbolic frame of a smaller graphic. His works also contain symbolism of the egg as an archetypal sign of conception, beginning, and creation. Many of his works are titled "Conception," which indicates how much he was occupied by universal themes — childhood, pain, youth, old age, death. For Nevjestić, all these themes do not follow a linear path but return, rotate, and repeat. Like a circle.
For Nevjestić, words were an inseparable part of the image. He often embedded his own thoughts, fragments of poems, comments, and even curses into his graphics. Sometimes he would simply write down: "Today I was at a concert, they were playing Richter."
Virgilije Nevjestić was a true master of graphics, especially of the complex aquatint technique, which, as curator Pintarić explains, “demonstrated his painterly sensibility, knowledge of composition, colourism, and the ability to achieve almost painterly effects within graphic technique.”
