Vasko Lipovac

In 2015 University of Split's art gallery was renamed University Gallery "Vasko Lipovac".

Exceptionally prolific and equally skillful in various techniques and using wide range of materials, high-polished metal, polychromous wood, enamel, terracotta or polyester to create his sculptures, reliefs and mobiles, his work encompasses many different art forms (drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, illustration as well as set and costume design). As a result, he had almost 100 solo and over 200 group, juried, problem, conceptual, and important invitational exhibitions in Croatia as well as abroad during his life. He gained a great deal of deserved popularity with the wider public and earned an equally high esteem and recognition with the professional critics and received over twenty awards and honors for his sculptures, paintings, graphics, illustrations and public monuments. In May 2006, “Slobodna Dalmacija” awarded him with the lifetime achievement award.

Lipovac was twice part of the team, led by architect Branko Silađin, that conceived and designed national pavilions for the World Exhibition. He made paintings that flanked the entrance of the pavilion for Expo '98 in Lisbon, and designed the exterior of the pavilion for Expo 2000 in Hanover, in his trademark minimalist style. Both pavilions are considered to be among the best in their respective Expos, and the pavilion for Hanover Expo was included in the 2010 exhibition Architecture as Landscape: A Morphology of Contemporary Croatian Architecture at London Festival of Architecture.

Since the mid-eighties Lipovac has made several highly successful excursions into performing arts and won prestigious Marul award in 1991 for set design. His works in theatre include set, costume and puppet designs:

Since 1967, Vasko Lipovac lived and worked in Split, Croatia, where the Mediterranean climate inspired him to fulfil his poetic vision, and to create numerous works. Four thematic units have been detected in the work of Lipovac, namely the Mediterranean, sports, the sacral and erotic.

In 1959 he married Milena Matas, and they later had three sons. He spent most of the 1960 in the army, and upon returning to Zagreb he spent a year (1964–1966) as an art editor assistant in the magazine “Chemistry in industry”, which was the only full-time job he ever had. In 1965 he had the first solo exhibition, in the Museum of Fine Arts in Split; the exhibition was curated by Kruno Prijatelj, with whom Lipovac established close collaboration over the next two decades, resulting in numerous projects and exhibitions.

After graduation, from 1955 to 1959 Lipovac attended the Master's Workshop of professor Krsto Hegedušić. This postgraduate study gave many talented young visual artists, as diverse as Miroslav Šutej and Marina Abramović, much needed freedom and opportunity to explore and use their artistic sensibility. Shortly after joining workshop Lipovac started abstracting human figures, as well as their surroundings, to simple geometric shapes that will became a hallmark of his work in following decades. Continuous strides towards radical stylization lead him to a short but very successful foray into geometric abstraction. Towards the end of Lipovac's postgraduate study the Workshop was visited by Peggy Guggenheim, who bought one of his works. This episode was finished off at the end of 1950s with an exhibition in City of York Art Gallery, together with Ordan Petlevski. The exhibition was curated by Hans Hess, and received a positive review from Herbert Read.

After graduating from the secondary school, he moved to Zagreb, Croatia in 1950 and enrolled in the Academy of Applied Arts. It is worth mentioning that during this period of the early 1950s, many future prominent artists attended Zagreb Academy of Applied Arts, such as Zlatko Bourek, Jagoda Buić, Ante Sony Jakić, Zvonimir Lončarić, Mladen Pejaković, Ordan Petlevski and Pavao Štalter. Lipovac initially chose sculpture, in the class of Kosta Angeli Radovani, but during sophomore year (1951/1952) he switched to painting, where his mentor became Željko Hegedušić. In his final year at the Academy Lipovac created his first notable work, a stained glass "Woman with a Cat", now part of the Museum of Arts and Crafts collection.

Vasko Lipovac (14 June 1931 – 4 July 2006) was a Yugoslavian and Croatian painter, sculptor, printmaker, designer, illustrator and scenographer and one of the most prominent artists of the region. He is best known for his minimalist figuration and use of intense, unmodulated and often dissonant palette. With the exception of his juvenile period of geometric abstraction, he remained loyal to figuration throughout his whole career. Exceptionally prolific, he worked in various techniques and was equally skilful in using high-polished metal, polychromous wood, enamel, terracotta or polyester to create his sculptures, reliefs and mobiles.

Vasko Lipovac was born on June 14, 1931, in Škaljari, a small coastal settlement near Kotor in Montenegro. He was the youngest of five children in a very harmonious family of a prosperous merchant and a shipping agent Spasoje Lipovac and Antica Lui, the daughter of a respectable landowner Maksimilijan Lui. He attended Real Grammar School in Kotor, where his drawing teacher was Mato Đuranović (1895–1973), the painter who inspired his students with the bright, shiny colors of his works.