Beyond Academia: Bosilj, Sekulić, Skurjeni, Tisnikar

The exhibition Beyond Academia presents a comprehensive overview of the work of four exceptional painters from the second half of the 20th century: Ilija Bašičević Bosilj, Sava Sekulić, Matija Skurjeni, and Jože Tisnikar. Their artistic oeuvres represent the pinnacle of artistic production by self-taught artists in the broader region during the postwar period, when the art of non-academic creators was exceptionally popular among both the public and experts on the international stage.

In art history, the work of non-academic artists in the 20th century was given a wide variety of labels, such as primitive and naïve art, art brut, and the art of self-taught artists. But for many unconventional and self-taught artists of that time, this was merely an institutional framework that enabled them to work publicly at a time when modern art was loosening the classical academic constraints. The four artists showcased here – Bosilj, Sekulić, Skurjeni, and Tisnikar – do not, from the perspective of their artistic practices and creative impulses, fit into any of the aforementioned categories of non-academic art. Instead, each of the four artists has developed a distinctive visual language rooted in their personal experiences, fantastical visions, or dream worlds. Their practices are extremely diverse, radically idiosyncratic, ambiguous, and marked by elements of the mystical and magical.

The paintings of Ilija Bašičević Bosilj (1895–1972) draw on the idea of a transition into a cosmic dimension, as his fantastical depictions bring together unusual combinations of people, animals, mythological creatures, and historical figures. The painter Sava Sekulić (1902–1989) depicts hybrid figures without conventional anatomy in his works; in his primal visual language, these figures are stretched, flattened, multiplied, and fragmented. The artist Matija Skurjeni (1898–1990) consistently and obsessively depicted the realm of dreams and memory, while his work is characterised by motifs of trains, railroads, tunnels, and bridges, which function as passageways to another reality. The paintings of Jože Tisnikar (1928–1998) directly address the notion of transience and mortality, as they depict stylised scenes from the hospital morgue in Slovenj Gradec, where the artist was employed.

The exhibition is a result of collaboration with number of museums and art collections: Museum of Naive and Marginal Art in Belgrade and Jagodina, the Ilija & Mangelos Foundation in Novi Sad (Serbia), Museum of Matija Skurjeni in Zaprešić (Croatia), Zander Collection in Cologne (Germany), Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Koroška in Slovenj Gradec, Jože Tisnikar Cultural Society in Mislinja, and Galerija Božidar Jakac – Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Kostanjevica na Krki (Slovenia), and two private collections from Slovenia and Croatia.

The exhibition is on display until 28 February 2027.