Reviews

Excerpts from critical reviews

“BIG BANG -Ill” of Mardesic’s is another monument of stubby whirls, brings this point forward. The whirls are near contact, the upper red, the lower blue, and m approaching they seem to give off a counterdynamic of rain-wetted yellow. These burly, sturdy forms derive of their authority from the dominant hue as if his brush were badly cleaned and still had former strokes and colors clinging to it. They also must take some of their sureness from the artist’s background. Boris the painter began his career with realistic appraisals of his native land’s coastal rocks and stone fences. Now he is after bigger game: depicting the universe, but his earlier solid, tenacious handling of his craggy homescapes still shows in the toughness he brings to presenting the insubstantial.

J. FEAST in “DOWNTOWN”, New York, 1988

Nature has become flesh: the painter now carries within himself this vision, a demanding and transcendent vision. He has detached from its origins in order to project it, skinned alive and palpitating, completely turned inside out like a glove, into infinite astral space in full organic metamorphosis. These coloured inks are marvelously expressive of the eruptive power of this profound emotion, revealing to Mardesic himself the true features of his memory; all, the experience, suffering and inspiration of man, all his existential hope, cannot be fully expressed through love for one’s native land *and country, the patria in the Graeco-Latin sense. Patria for Mardesic now resides in the dramatic energy of fusion, the titanic concussion of atoms, the sensual interrogations about the galactic transformation of the crust (pulp) of our earth.

P. RESTANY in “DOMUS INTERNATIONAL”, Paris, 1980

Vibrations are no longer material for calculus, but move onto the artist’s canvas. Set aside, the too famous formula E=mc2 filtered through Einstein’s enigmatic look, is transposed into painting, which is light and matter. Knowledge gives way to wonder. This is undoubtedly the reason why we are so sensitive to this art consecrated both to veneration and exaltation. Rather than understanding Mardesic’s painting, we should try to immerse ourselves in it. If I was not afraid of pedantry, I should speak about kinesthetic painting -one which adjusts the movements of our body to those of nature and vice-versa. Beyond our eye, these paintings address what In us Is united with the earth, the sky, the air, less for their shape than for the forces that generate them.

R. BERGER in “GALLA INTERNATIONAL”, Milano, 1980

The prominent veteran painter Boris Mardesic attempts to visualize the cosmic violence that is the origin of something more than life, existence tself. For this, Mardesic searches for the essential rhythms, forms and colors. His colors are mainly aquamarine, blue, reds and yellows, and he reveals himself as a master of lyric colors and abstract movement. Mardesic is unusual in the choice of medium-pastel or gouache on paper and oil on canvas, each chosen for its subtle difference in color effect. The largest piece, “Big Bang” gouache, extended by mirrors facing each side to imply the near infinite possibilities. The fantastic churning energies Mardesic lets loose are slowed down by textual effect, which give the added import of the passage of time.

A. ILEIN in “ARTSPEAK”, New York, 1988

Painter Boris Mardesic is fascinated by the baroque forms produced by the deployment of energy, be in the shape of waves, geological transformations or storms on the face of the sun. Actually, it is hard to identify any painting with a specific element. The recent paintings shown here strike me as the most effective. Their evocation of natural forces is presented in a visual language which brings to mind the vistas of Italian religious art of the 18th Century. Sometimes the dimensions themselves are grand and the flux and tensions are presented with a cosmic scope.

M. GIBSON in “HERALD TRIBUNE”-International- 1981

Although each picture has its real images that are interpreted by Mardesic’s hand and vision with certain overtones of hallucination and even monotony, each work shows the painter’s sobriety and solid background.Rembrandt’s “Quartered Ox” and the blood saturated legacy of Goya are the immediate precedents that leap to the mind when contemplating some of Mardesic’s works. Furthermore if these compositions were not drawn from a certain geographic reality, they could, as has already been said, be considered as “photographs” of some human being’s indefinable, incomprehensible mind and thought. A certain underlying and superficial expressionism dramatize naturally Mardesic’s great paintings.

E. Florez in “EL ALCAZAR”, Madrid, 1975

As often happens in nature, a thing concrete par excellence is ransformed into an abstract image. Here are the pictures of Boris Mardesic. Naturalistic and, for this very reason, for our eyes, fantastic. With pain, Mardesic has shaped true bas-reliefs on his canvasses, rugged, furrowed, spongy, corresponding to the crests of rocks. Then one approaches, touches and realizes it is not true at all: the painting is pefectly flat, those protrusions have been obtained by a kind of unheard-of “trompe-l’oel”; a polished effect the artist also obtains in his etchings.

D. Buzzati, “CORRIERE DELLA SERA”, Milano, 1970

Mardesic’s works in select museums and collections

AUSTRALIA:

• Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

BELGIUM:

• Royal Museum des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; Museum D’Ixelles, Brussels;
• Museum Stendelijk, Ostende; Gallery Campo, Antwerp;
• Collection R. De Cnoder, Antwerp.

CROATIA / SERBIA:

• National Museum, Pula; Domiciliary Museum B. Mardesic, Komiza, Island of
  Vis;
• Museum of Modern Art, Belgrade.

FRANCE:

• Contemporary Fine Arts Museum, Chamalieres
• Collection Slobo, Clemont Ferran.

ITALY:

• Contemporary Fine Arts Museum, Ascoli Piceno; Pinacoteca Macerata, Macerata;
• Modern Art Museum, Montesegale;
• Assembly Room, Porto St. Elpidio; Gallery Del Milione, Milano;
• Collections: L. Garili and R. Januzzelli, Milano.

PORTUGAL:

• Museum Arte Moderna, Lisbon

SPAIN:

• Museum Alto Aragon, Huesca
• Museum de Villa Fames, Castelon
• Santander Museum, Santander
• San Telmo Museum, San Sebastiarn
• Gallery Novarts, Madrid
• Collection J. Mordo, Madrid

SWITZERLAND:

• Museum Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
• Collection Banque Indosuez, Geneve
• Gallery De Muri, Locarno
• Collection LA. Buzzi, Lausanne

U.S.A.:

• Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida
• Gallery Anuilla, Mystic, Connecticut
• Collection J. Perez de Cuellar, former Secretary General of the UN, New York
• Collection L.S. Eagleberger, former Secretary of State, Washington, D.C
• Collection A. Buzzi, former president and C.E.O., Philip Morris, New York
• Collection A. Nahayan, U.E.A. Ambassador to the U.S.A., Washington, D.C
• Collections: N.L. Serota, D. Schimansky, B.I. Licul and I. Deligan, New York
• Collection Betty C. Davis, Washington, D.C
• Collection Z. Mardeshich, Los Angeles
• Collection L.B. Menin, Groton, Connecticut
• Collection G. Cvitanovich, New Orleans