NATIONAL AND UNIVERSITY LIBRARY IN ZAGREB

“Drawing as Discovery of the World: Dražen Trogrlić” art monograph presented at NSK

On 12 May 2023, the National and University Library in Zagreb (NSK) hosted a programme presenting a monograph on the artwork on paper of a distinguished Croatian painter, sculptor and graphic artist Dražen Trogrlić (Crtež kao otkrivanje svijeta: radovi na papiru Dražena Trogrlića = Drawing as Discovery of the World: Dražen Trogrlić), authored by a Senior Research Adviser at the Croatian Institute of Art History Dr Milan Pelc and published by the Croatian University Press (Hrvatska sveučilišna naklada).

The programme included an exhibition featuring a selection of Trogrlić’s works in the Library’s Print Collection, which holds 14 drawings, 17 prints and 7 print portfolios by Trogrlić, and the monograph was presented by its author Dr Milan Pelc, a longtime collaborator of the Library, the monograph’s consulting editors Professor at the Department of Art History of the Zagreb Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Dino Milinović and Research Associate at the Croatian Institute of Art History Dr Ivana Mance, Head of the NSK Print Collection Tamara Ilić Olujić and General Manager at the Croatian University Press Anita Šikić.

During forty years of Dražen Trogrlić’s career as an artist, various aspects of his work have been the subject of analyses and reviews by prominent Croatian art historians such as Mladenka Šolma, Tonko Maroević, Đurđa Petravić, Davorin Vujičić, Lilijana Domić, Darko Glavan, Višnja Slavica Gabout and Milan Pelc. However, since Trogrlić’s artwork on paper – as a particular segment of his oeuvre persistently present throughout all the periods of his work – has so far not been comprehensively analysed, Dr Pelc took upon himself that task and offers in the monograph a synthesis of this part of Trogrlić’s work, approaching it as a whole from the perspective of medium as well as of poetic quality.

The Print Collection of the National and University Library in Zagreb has cooperated with Dražen Trogrlić since 1986, when the Library and the Varaždin City Museum jointly published Trogrlić’s linocut print portfolio (Iskušenja južnih mora [The temptations of the southern seas]. Since then, apart from the 2003 Trogrlić’s art monograph, published by the Library and the Klovićevi dvori Gallery, the Library and Trogrlić published another two portfolios (Povratak uoči dolaska [A return on the eve of arrival], 1987, with the Međimurje Museum in Čakovec acting as the co-publisher; Predavanje o dimovima [A Lecture on Smoke], 2006).