A retrospective exhibition is a significant event in an artist’s life.
In a way, it means settling accounts with oneself by evaluating own creations over a longer time span, which not every artist has courage to undertake, especially at a relatively young age for doing so, like in Maja’s case. With this act, Maja shows self-confidence and stands behind her work, demonstrating maturity of an artist who no longer questions oneself but is sure to be on the right path.
Maja Jelušić showcases 20 years of her work through 12 cycles of “Cathedrals”, several cycles of art textiles „Agava & pinus nigra dalmatica“ and few textile mosaics.
The titles of these art cycles itself indicate her deep sense of tradition and understanding of a cultural and natural heritage. However, for Maja ‘the painter’, the content plays a secondary role.
Cubism, constructivism, and geometric abstraction are just few of art theory concepts exploited in her work.
These artistic styles are largely deprived of content and motive or, in Maja’s work, are completely simplified and condensed. For Maja, the overarching leitmotiv is the cathedral of Hvar, whose voluminosity is depicted with vertical and horizontal lines in her entire opus.
She needs look no further than this landmark, as her cathedral appears in infinite variations of lines and surfaces, to which she adds colour with much thought and consideration.
By looking at these compositions, we come to realise how she - by playing with the same elements, surfaces, lines, forms and colours - discovered an inexhaustible source of ideas that just spring up and materialise in fresh variations.
Maja’s inclination towards different techniques and materials is very much responsible for this freshness: besides acrylic, her compositions abound also in collage, pastels, textiles and combinations of other techniques. She is not confined to the two-dimensionality either, but experiments with three-dimensional cubes which, similarly to paintings, are modularly built into her compositions in inexhaustible combinations.
Comparing Maja’s work to other fine artists, one might wonder why she persists in just exploring the form, content wise without imagination, but that is exactly her specialty and advantage.
As a successful author of poetry and prose, her literary works are the place where she questions her feelings, immediate surroundings, and imagination, while allowing for “narrowness” in her visual arts.
Maja Jelušić is a versatile artist. Ever since her first solo exhibition in the Slovenian city of Brežice in 2001, until the latest cycle of ’12 cathedrals’, her paintings have been surging fresh, impactful, and concise, with an exceptional sense of harmonious construction with carefully measured colouring.
While she remains loyal to the minimum descriptiveness and synthesis of forms, her plainness is far from monotonous. More on the contrary, through thoughtful experimentation without repetition, she has developed a distinctive style, at which only a few succeed. She writes poetry and prose, exhibits a lot, runs her own gallery HVAROOM, which has become one of the unavoidable places for tourists and local art lovers in Hvar.
This exhibition is a summary of her 20-year work which collects only the most important parts of her extensive oeuvre, and only touches upon other art expressions that occupy her work. I am certain that her skills, energy and artistic curiosity will bring on many more valuable works. This exhibition is therefore not only a retrospective but also an announcement and confirmation of perseverance in exploring new possibilities and finding new solutions, which is and must be an attribute of genuine artists.
Dejanira Burmas Domančić, senior curator
Hvar Heritage Museum
In a way, it means settling accounts with oneself by evaluating own creations over a longer time span, which not every artist has courage to undertake, especially at a relatively young age for doing so, like in Maja’s case. With this act, Maja shows self-confidence and stands behind her work, demonstrating maturity of an artist who no longer questions oneself but is sure to be on the right path.
Maja Jelušić showcases 20 years of her work through 12 cycles of “Cathedrals”, several cycles of art textiles „Agava & pinus nigra dalmatica“ and few textile mosaics.
The titles of these art cycles itself indicate her deep sense of tradition and understanding of a cultural and natural heritage. However, for Maja ‘the painter’, the content plays a secondary role.
Cubism, constructivism, and geometric abstraction are just few of art theory concepts exploited in her work.
These artistic styles are largely deprived of content and motive or, in Maja’s work, are completely simplified and condensed. For Maja, the overarching leitmotiv is the cathedral of Hvar, whose voluminosity is depicted with vertical and horizontal lines in her entire opus.
She needs look no further than this landmark, as her cathedral appears in infinite variations of lines and surfaces, to which she adds colour with much thought and consideration.
By looking at these compositions, we come to realise how she - by playing with the same elements, surfaces, lines, forms and colours - discovered an inexhaustible source of ideas that just spring up and materialise in fresh variations.
Maja’s inclination towards different techniques and materials is very much responsible for this freshness: besides acrylic, her compositions abound also in collage, pastels, textiles and combinations of other techniques. She is not confined to the two-dimensionality either, but experiments with three-dimensional cubes which, similarly to paintings, are modularly built into her compositions in inexhaustible combinations.
Comparing Maja’s work to other fine artists, one might wonder why she persists in just exploring the form, content wise without imagination, but that is exactly her specialty and advantage.
As a successful author of poetry and prose, her literary works are the place where she questions her feelings, immediate surroundings, and imagination, while allowing for “narrowness” in her visual arts.
Maja Jelušić is a versatile artist. Ever since her first solo exhibition in the Slovenian city of Brežice in 2001, until the latest cycle of ’12 cathedrals’, her paintings have been surging fresh, impactful, and concise, with an exceptional sense of harmonious construction with carefully measured colouring.
While she remains loyal to the minimum descriptiveness and synthesis of forms, her plainness is far from monotonous. More on the contrary, through thoughtful experimentation without repetition, she has developed a distinctive style, at which only a few succeed. She writes poetry and prose, exhibits a lot, runs her own gallery HVAROOM, which has become one of the unavoidable places for tourists and local art lovers in Hvar.
This exhibition is a summary of her 20-year work which collects only the most important parts of her extensive oeuvre, and only touches upon other art expressions that occupy her work. I am certain that her skills, energy and artistic curiosity will bring on many more valuable works. This exhibition is therefore not only a retrospective but also an announcement and confirmation of perseverance in exploring new possibilities and finding new solutions, which is and must be an attribute of genuine artists.
Dejanira Burmas Domančić, senior curator
Hvar Heritage Museum
