red. prof. art. Gordana Bakić

She was born on March 28, 1972 in Zagreb. In 1986, she enrolled in the School of Applied Arts and Design in Zagreb, majoring in graphic design, and graduated in 1990. In the same year, she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts, the study of Fine Arts at the Department of Education. She graduated in the class of Prof. Zlatko Keser in 2001. In the period 2002 – 2012, she worked as a painter at the Croatian National Theater in Zagreb on scenography. In 2006, she enrolled in postgraduate studies at the Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Ljubljana, majoring in painting (mentor Prof. Bojan Gorenec), and received her master's degree in 2011 with the topic "Structuring the whole by self-recycling". Since 2012, she has been employed at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, now as a full professor, in the part of the art field: Fine Arts, art field: Painting. She has been a member of the Croatian Association of Artists since 1996. In 2020, she was elected as an associate member, and in 2024 as a full member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. So far, she has participated in more than 70 group and 40 solo exhibitions. Her art monograph was published (2016) and she is the author of two art books (Pattern of Movement and Different Image, 2022). She is the winner of the HDLU Award for Best Young Artist (2003), the Grand Prix Award for Painting of the Croatian Postal Bank (2007), the HDLU Award for the exhibition "Renewal" (2018) and the Nives Kavurić Kurtović Award of the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb for the overall (artistic, professional and pedagogical) two-year work (2024).

In her artistic work, she explores drawing and painting by combining various visual materials and contents that gradually interpenetrate, transform and thus create hybrids of imaginary and everyday situations. As a starting point, she often uses a variety of textual, photographic and illustrative templates from magazines, lexicons, books or textbooks, and once selected, they enter the process of continuous re-collage and recycling. In this process, experimental works, labs, diaries of the non-existent, branching fields are created... These are temporary objects, drawings, collages and paintings of smaller formats that later become an integral part of larger spatial installations. By combining painting and drawing experience, he often approaches the painting as a spatial organic structure, continuously changing it with each new presentation. The solid envelope becomes permeable, so the interweaving of various techniques and materials creates layered drawing-painting spaces. There you can find pieces of canvas, paper, wooden and plastic parts, strings, all kinds of leftovers and discarded materials that have not found their primary purpose. Each element participates in the gradual construction of an imaginary landscape. The abandonment of the square format of paintings or drawings is associated with many years of work in the theater, more precisely, work on painting scenographies. The technology of work and the experience of painting on a large-sized theater screen, with scenery, influenced the dissolution of the two-dimensional image in my own work and its connection with the surrounding space.

He teaches as part of the compulsory practical subjects, Drawing at the 3rd year of the preposition. study and Painting at the dipl. study of Fine Arts. As part of the elective classes, he teaches the practical course Drawing Processes, which explores the processuality and methods of upgrading drawing elements within artistic work, and the subject Stage Painting, which deals with the methods and techniques of painting theatrical scenography.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS: 2024 – "Field of Branching", CEKAO Gallery, Zagreb 2023 – "Paintings and Panoramas", Vukovar City Museum, Eltz Castle, Orangery Gallery 2023 – "Panoramas of Constant Motion", Museum of Fine Arts Split 2023 – "A Different Picture", HDLU House / Meštrović Pavilion, Zagreb GROUP EXHIBITIONS: 2023 – "Visible", interinstitutional project and exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb 2021. – 6. Biennial of Painting, House of Croatian Fine Artists / Meštrović Pavilion, Zagreb 2019 – "Iconography of the City II, Visions of the City", National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb 2018. – 5. Croatian Triennial of Drawings, Cabinet of Graphics of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Zagreb ART BOOKS: 2022 (14/12) – art books published: Pattern of Movement and Different Image MONOGRAPHS 2016 – monograph Gordana Bakić, Art magazine Kontura, text: Marijan Špoljar WEBSITE: https://gordanabakic.art/