And this fact was centrally essential in the organisation of this exhibition; in order to present the plastic materiality of sculptural expression, the living dialogue between sculpture and the various chronological and spatial initiatives in which it develops, and the quality that, in the spatial form of a stone or any other tangible building material, artistic initiatives are visually expressed along with national endeavours and mixtures of influence.

The survey of Croatian sculpture, which is being presented to the European public, spans three decades and includes over fifty works of art by seventeen artists. Selected according to aesthetics and not according to a generation key, these artists, with their work, represent a harmonic picture of the lively, modern, Croatian sculptural matrix, and provide an authentic response to the question – to what extent is creative work defined by artistic heritage, and to what extent is it defined by art schools? The Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (Akademija likovnih umjetnosti) was the starting point of their development, and nowadays it is a starting point of their creativity and pedagogical work.  The diagram of the environment in which they have sculpturally matured, and in which they work, has been shaped in the form of a Croatian bird: from its Istrian beak (Zrinščak, De Karina, Majkus), over its Zagorjian head (Gašparić), its Zagrebian eyes (Mataušić, M. Ujević, M. Bauer, Korkut), towards its strong Dalmatian wing (Barišić, Bogdanić, Drinković, Hraste, Kovačić, Mijić, Stošić), to the pendant above its continental plain (Kožarić, Matasić).

With its expressive and thematic diversity, which widely extends from classical portraits and inspired interpretations dredged from their national cultural and mythical heritage to abstract forms and conceptual solutions, the exhibition presents works which are inspired by a stratified heritage, as well as the works of artists who find their initiatives for creative procedures in the fragile spaces of virtual reality and in a conceptual approach to creativity.

—Jasminka Poklečki Stošić