Ivan Rabuzin
Described as "one of the greatest naïve painters of all times and countries," Ivan Rabuzin was born in 1921 in the village of Kljuc, near the town of Novi Marof, in Croatia. After he left elementary school, he learned the trade of carpentry, achieving master level at the Craft School in Zagreb in 1947. For a short period of time he attended an evening art school for workers where he was taught by the painter and sculptor Kosta Angeli Radovani. From 1950 to 1963 he worked in a joinery firm in Novi Marof, first as master carpenter, then as foreman and technical manager, and finally as acting managing director
Ivan Rabuzin began painting in 1956, when he left the carpenter's job. Visiting the galleries and reading books on various artists, Rabuzin learned taught himself about the art world and art history. His earliest works date from the mid 1940s and display an academic and realistic treatment of his subjects and a striving for Impressionist effects. He began to exhibit his work in 1956. In 1959 he discovered the theme of lyrical landscapes and with it his own visual language. Finding archetypal symbols in the surrounding countryside, he began to create …
Described as "one of the greatest naïve painters of all times and countries," Ivan Rabuzin was born in 1921 in the village of Kljuc, near the town of Novi Marof, in Croatia. After he left elementary school, he learned the trade of carpentry, achieving master level at the Craft School in Zagreb in 1947. For a short period of time he attended an evening art school for workers where he was taught by the painter and sculptor Kosta Angeli Radovani. From 1950 to 1963 he worked in a joinery firm in Novi Marof, first as master carpenter, then as foreman and technical manager, and finally as acting managing director
Ivan Rabuzin began painting in 1956, when he left the carpenter's job. Visiting the galleries and reading books on various artists, Rabuzin learned taught himself about the art world and art history. His earliest works date from the mid 1940s and display an academic and realistic treatment of his subjects and a striving for Impressionist effects. He began to exhibit his work in 1956. In 1959 he discovered the theme of lyrical landscapes and with it his own visual language. Finding archetypal symbols in the surrounding countryside, he began to create personal and highly recognisable works through a process of abstraction, systematic simplification and a conscious endeavour to approximate everything to its closest geometrical form: he painted wreaths of spherical clouds, trees with round trunks, dome-shaped hills, flower and sun spheres. Rabuzin found the utmost simplicity, concision and perfection in the sphere and the circle, which were to become his symbols of the absolute, symbols of completeness.
Rabuzin's Work has made its way into numerous private collections and world renowned museums, and he is one of the rare artists to have his work displayed at the Museo Vaticano in the Vatican. He died in 2008.
Courtesy of Raw Vision Magazine
