Welcome to the official website of Biserka Baretić

 

Biserka Baretić, nationally and internationally acclaimed Croatian painter and graphic artist, born on July 27th, 1933 in Zagreb. She exhibited at numerous exhibitions, both nationally and abroad.  She had won a number of prizes and awards for her paintings, drawings and prints. Most of the largest museums in the country and abroad exhibit her work. She lives and works in Zagreb.


She was born as the second of four children of Katarina and Leonardo. In 1949 she enrolled in the School of Applied Arts, but her teachers soon advised her to compete for the Academy of Fine Arts. She studied painting at the Academy from 1951 to 1953. In 1954 she left for Rovinj where she first publicly showed her work with the Rovinj Group. Her work produced in this period belongs to the Surrealist school. She established her reputation as a painter by her first individual exhibition in Zagreb in 1958. In 1960 she became an associate of prof. Krsto Hegedušić’s State Master’s Workshop and has been a free-lance painter ever since. The continuity of her creative effort brought her close to abstract art.


“Referring to Jerzy Andrejewski's well-chosen syntagm, one may claim that the creative effort of Biserka Baretić has developed under the sign of “ashes and diamonds”. Specifically, it is based on disintegration, fire and a "tragic feeling of life”, and its intention is pronouncedly compensatory and cathartic: it aims at crystallizing the traumatic and the organic into firm and pure expression, at suggesting behind apparent disorder clear, transparent and glittering mineral form, at extracting crystalline ingredients out of impure ore or -in the manner of the already mentioned alchemists - at creatively transforming dirt, roughness, crudity, not into gold but into diamonds. Biserka Baretić's pen or brush has never been guided by the idea to imitate nature, but by the pressing need to create (“a new nature”, if you like). Hence her work cannot be discussed in terms of any mimetic aesthetics; it would be similarly inappropriate to rate the iconic quality of her signs, and completely unacceptable to compare the appearance of her drawings and paintings with potential real models. Isolated from the outside world, these works are completely autonomous, even self-referencing”.

Tonko Maroević


Biserka Baretić, nacionalno i internacionalno poznata hrvatska slikarica i grafičarka, rođena 27. srpnja 1933. godine u Zagrebu. Izlagala je na brojnim izložibama u zemlji i inozemstvu, njezina se djela nalaze u zbirkama najvećih muzeja i galerija, a za svoj je rad na polju slikarstva, crteža i grafike dobila brojne i prestižne nagrade, između ostalih i Nagradu Vladimir Nazor. Živi i djeluje u Zagrebu.



U Školu primijenjene umjetnosti upisuje se 1949. godine. Od 1951. do 1953. studira slikarstvo na Likovnoj akademiji u Zagrebu. Prvu samostalnu izložbu ostvarila je 1958. godine u Zagrebu. Prvi put se javnosti predstavila radovima na izložbi Rovinjske grupe u Rovinju 1955. godine. Radovi nastali u tome periodu pripadaju nadrealističkoj fazi. Od 1960. do 1962. suradnica je Majstorske radionice Krste Hegedušica. Od 1961. do danas djeluje kao samostalna umjetnica. Glavni dio njezina opusa pripada apstraktnoj fazi.


“Pozivajući se na sretno sročenu sintagmu Jarzyja Andrejewskoga, ustvrdit ćemo da se stvaralaštvo Biserke Baretić razvilo u znaku "pepela i dijamanta”. Naime, podloga mu je rasap, pozar i "tragično osjećanje života", a namjera izrazito kompenzativna i katarktička: da traumatsko i organsko kristalizira u čvrst i čist izraz, da iza prividnog nereda, nasluti jasnu, prozračnu i blistavu mineralnu formu, odnosno da iz nečiste rude izluči kristalne sastojke iii da pak - na način spominjanih alkemičara - prljavost, grubost, sirovost kreativno preobrazi, ne baš u zlato nego upravo u dijamant.

Što god je izišlo iz pera ili kista Biserke Baretić nije bilo vođeno idejom oponašanja prirode već potrebom i nužnošću stvaranja (ako hoćete, "nove prirode«). Stoga o njezinim djelima ne možemo raspravljati u okvirima bilo kakve mimetičke poetike, neprimjereno bi bilo govoriti o stupnju ikoničnosti njihovih znakova, a sasvim je isključeno da bismo izgled crteža i slika uspoređivali s potencijalnim zbiljskim predlošcima. Izdvojeni od vanjskog svijeta ti su radovi sasvim autonomni, čak autoreferencijalni.”

Tonko Maroević