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Exhibition of drawings by Damir Karakaš "How to explain paintings to a dead hedgehog"

As part of its cooperation with the Festival of World Literature, the Šira Gallery is opening an exhibition of drawings by Damir Karakaš "How to Explain Paintings to a Dead Hedgehog", with the participation of graduate students of the Department of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.

Šira Gallery, September 4, 2026 at 8 p.m.

As part of its cooperation with the Festival of World Literature, the Šira Gallery is opening an exhibition of drawings by Damir Karakaš entitled "How to Explain Paintings to a Dead Hedgehog".

In the context of the dialogue between literature and fine arts, the works of the exhibition are also exhibited by students of the graduate study of the Department of Painting of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, from the class of prof. art. Matko Vekić – Barbara Jurić, Karlo Sabolić and Franka Vrljić.

From the preface to the exhibition

"So far, the most chronologically comprehensive exhibition of Damir Karakaš's drawings at the Šira Gallery presents a selection from various cycles in which the world of simple people and the iconography of war are primarily reflected. The appearance of the peasant does not show an idealized scene, as in the painting of the naïve with which he had motivational contact at an early stage, but comic bizarreness comes to the fore. These are situations that bring the dark and hypocritical side of human nature, as in the narrative scenes of morbid executions and public butchering of the genitals.

Here and there, one will also come across an independent motif of a street musician, a postman and others. If we look at his monochrome drawing approach, especially on a more frequent motif, such as a funeral, we can see a reduction in drawings over time. That the early drawings from the 1990s are more condensed and expressive in approaching the primordial, and the more recent ones are more concise in line strokes. Nevertheless, on numerous occasions, he continuously drew croquets, caricatures of faces he met and imagined, most often from Lika. He drew writers who inspire him. However, if, in addition to being a writer, he was perceived primarily as a caricaturist, it would overlook other parts of his artistic oeuvre, that he was the author of wider artistic occupations. His caricatures were printed in newspapers and presented in unconventional exhibition places, but he drew in several genres, that is, he created a parallel opus in this medium, and at the same time he also touched on performative, i.e. conceptual artistic practice. ..

Is it necessary to point out how much more modest art would be if it were not for the contribution of self-taught artists? For example, if we recall Henri Rousseau or Mladen Stilinović. From the Modernism onwards, numerous writers have contributed to art criticism, and some of them drew or wanted to. For example, Miroslav Krleža studied drawing privately. Franz Kafka drew on the margins of his manuscripts, but he saw his learning as very unsuccessful and later pointed out that he had corrupted his talent in this way. Namely, he was self-taught, and the publications and analyses of drawings indicate that there are connections in relation to his writing. In Damir Karakaš's case, the unadulterated line that he came up with on his own stands out, as well as the fact that motivic and expressive parallels are intertwined throughout his expression. Both in the gradual release of superfluous narration and in the atmosphere, shifts from harmony to a combination of the comic and the frightening, i.e. the procedure of the grotesque or phantasmagoric by which he reveals the nature of the individual and society..."

Nevenka Šarčević

About the author

Damir Karakaš (1967, Plašćica near Brinje) is a writer and visual artist whose fourteen books have been published so far, for which he has received numerous awards. Among his prose works, Memory of the Forest, Okretište, Proslava, Podelu and Sunčanik are particularly noteworthy.

Over several decades, he published his caricatures and drawings in newspapers and exhibited at solo and group exhibitions around the world. His theatre plays are performed in Croatia and abroad, and films are made based on books.

Two years ago, at the Pula Film Festival, the film Celebration, based on the novel of the same name, won the Grand Golden Arena and the "Octavian" Award awarded by the Croatian Society of Film Critics. The same novel was published in San Francisco, and was selected by the cult magazine The Paris Review as one of the twelve best translated books of that year in the world.

Karakaš's books have been translated into German, English, Italian, French, Spanish, Arabic, Slovenian, Macedonian, Czech, Romanian, Bulgarian and Albanian. In Croatia, it has been included in school reading and literature books, and the novel Memory of the Forest is on the list of literature at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb.

Accompanying program to the exhibition

The program is held as part of the cooperation between the Šira Gallery and the Festival of World Literature.

"Between Image and Word" - Interview with Damir Karakaš

Šira Gallery, September 8, 2026 at 8 p.m.

Moderated by: Nevenka Šarčević

What to talk about with Damir Karakaš in the environment of his drawings at the Šira Gallery? Especially since this occasion will be the most comprehensive overview of Karakaš's drawing opus so far. We will talk about his artistic and overall work, the cycles he has created and the motifs that particularly intrigue him, as well as his relationships with literature.

Emphasis will be placed on issues such as where his creative impulses come from, not only from the Lika environment, growing up, education, but also literature, film, music, performance, and especially the history of painting, encounters with the work of other artists and travels. At the same time, the guiding motif will be the relationship between pictorial appearance and verbal appearance, which encourages the creation of an imaginative image.

"Karakaš's Imaginarium in Drawing" – thematic presentation

Šira Gallery, September 10, 2026 at 7 pm

Lecturer: Frano Dulibić

Moderated by: Nevenka Šarčević

What makes Damir Karakaš's drawings interesting? Some authors who successfully express themselves in one type of art often have a talent for other types of artistic expression, as evidenced by well-known examples on the global scene.

What are the characteristics of his drawings, who were his role models? It is not possible to interpret Karakaš's drawings without the context from which he emerged, and that means entering the history of drawing, the history of the grotesque, as well as artistic humor. Also, it is interesting to interpret the relationship between amateur and professional artistic expression.

The presentation is also conceived as a conversation with the audience.