In scarcely more than a decade of genuine artistic activity, Ivo Gattin (1926-1978), who graduated from the Art Academy in Zagreb in 1951, produced one of the most radical oeuvres of his time—not only in Zagreb and the former Yugoslavia, but also on the international stage. From 1956 onward, he pushed the language of
Art informel toward a "degree zero" of painting, before abandoning traditional formats to pursue, at the turn of the 1960s, an uncompromising and extreme "matterism" with no equivalent, for which somber hues, free surfaces, and the play of textures were central. Still largely unknown in the Western art world, Gattin must now take his place alongside the major figures who were his contemporaries—
Alberto Burri,
Robert Rauschenberg,
Lucio Fontana,
Gutai, and Anti-Form. Having produced an unparalleled body of work between 1956 and 1970, living between Zagreb and Milan, he gave up all artistic practice at the beginning of the 1970s before resuming it in 1976 two years before his death in 1978, the year the leading art figure
Ješa Denegri organized Gattin's first retrospective at Nova Gallery, Zagreb.
