Ufemat Croatia IV

oil on canvas
50 × 50 cm

In the year of 2015 I did the “Ufemat Croatia” cycle for an exhibition in Dubrovnik linked to the annual Congress of UFEMAT (an international association of producers and distributors of building materials headquartered in Brussels). Each one of the total of seven paintings communicated a story about architecture. For the lexicon-image “Ufemat Croatia IV” by way of preparation, from the lexicon of architects I picked out some who were close to me. The small format, 50 × 50 cm) required an additional winnowing. I wrote down some of the architects on the painting as being impossible to leave out (Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Curbusier, Walter Gropius, Mies van der Rohe…). I attempted to cover all the continents in the selection, various states, but there was one other important criterion: the typographic, how the name and surname worked visually. Did I need a capital Y, and in which row; did I need a lower-case w, a double o, a dash between surnames, a letter or two with an umlaut? I had to pay attention to these details while letter painting; if I made a wrong choice, the effort to master the fabric of the painting would be at least doubled, in order to reduce the visibility of the imperfections and so that the painting should work harmoniously and the inscription suggest spontaneity.

(2021; from the catalogue of the exhibition “Analogue Structures”, Slavonski Brod 2021)