Academician Dušan Džamonja Has Died

One of the greatest Croatian artists, a classic of Croatian avant-garde and world art, Academician Dušan Džamonja passed away this morning at the age of 81 from heart failure at the Zagreb Clinical Hospital Center “Rebro”.

Dušan Džamonja was born in 1928 in Strumica, Macedonia. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, where he graduated in 1951 in the class of Antun Augustinčić. From 1951 to 1953, he was an associate in the Master Workshop of Frano Kršinić. In his works, predominantly sculptures, Džamonja is inclined towards technical and formal experiments. Art criticism has assessed that he reduces form by condensing it into dynamic and tense shapes of symbolic meanings. At the end of the 1960s, he completely abandoned figuration, and his explorations of new forms resulted in the application of new materials such as iron and glass. This is best seen in the sculptures "Roots" and "Metal Sculpture 14". By serially assembling the basic element, he creates a series of variations of geometric purity.

Džamonja continues to shape compact or raščlanjenih sculptures in various interrelations. By connecting chains, he shapes so-called iron tapestries or suggestive free sculptures. He is the author of many works of monumental plastic, a recipient of the international award for the monument to the victims of Dachau, the memorial ossuary in the Italian city of Barletta, the monument to the victims in Podgarić, in the Memorial Area of Jasenovac, and elsewhere. Džamonja’s works are found in leading world museums of modern and contemporary art, and according to art criticism, his creation connects the times of the artistic avant-gardes of the 1950s with the third millennium like the arch of a great bridge. Džamonja’s work was also complemented by the Sculpture Park in Vrsar. The great Croatian artist held his last exhibition, a retrospective, in October of last year at the Museum of Arts and Crafts. (H)