 Dear Ladies and Gentlemen, We are happy to present a lifetime's worth of arts of Josip Konta, a Croatian painter and a sculptor. We hope you will find his works inspiring and look forward to the opportunity to present them to you in more detail. If you are interested to receive notifications regarding exhibitions of Josip Konta’s works or if you’d like to get in touch with us directly, please use the contact information below:
address: Božidara Magovca 163, Zagreb
phone: +385 1 66 05 111
mobile: +385 91 536 77 88
e-mail: konta@amisa.hr
Josip Konta is a passionate advocate of his inner perception of the real world. His expression takes us to a place of contemplation on the being and essence; a place where we discover the world around and inside of us.
Josip Konta was born in Livno on May 18th, 1946. He graduated from the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts in 1972, and had obtained his post-graduate degree in Professor Antun Augustincic’s workshop during the period of 1972-1974. After working as the director of sculpture foundry with the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts for two and a half years, he started working as a private sculptor and painter in Zagreb.
His works were displayed in numerous individual and joint exhibitions and have found their way to many private collections in Croatia and abroad.
 ECCE HOMO
Visual art is linked to a figure ever since its conception until today, when semiotics requires and presupposes the existence of a figure as a vital condition for the distinctiveness and flagrancy of a symbol. The symbolism thus remains a test for the viewer. And that symbol is a geometric space.
Josip Konta signed his name in the topology and typology of the Croatian contemporary sculpture with his distinct handwriting of pure form already with his first exhibition in the Zagreb Youth Showroom. He was a student of recently deceased Valo Michielli, he tested his craft as an assistant to Antun Augustinčić, and confirmed his skills while working as a head of the ALU Sculpture Foundry for several years. During a decade of his public appearance he organized four own exhibitions and acquired a confidence of a professional. His signature always remained the same: human body, standing man. Under this banner the sculptor fought, rose and fell under the burden of times that bring the inevitable feeling of depression and falling into the deep abyss of infinity, but also help find an almost desperate strength to rise into new dimensions of elation and fantasy. Because only in front of the gates of hell does a walking man find a way to the brightness of true inspiration, and his life restores the lost plentitude and completeness.
These primarily artistic views are reflected with almost the same amount of suggestion in the recent period (since the last exhibition five years ago) in his paintings. They, too, bring a variation of the same subject of a Man and a Woman, alone, in a group, in clusters and crowds, still or in a masterfully captured motion. These are the works of art that, in finding the way to a viewer, enrich us by sharing the nobility of suffering and pain, beauty and fantasy – found in a rapture of a Poet and at the bottom of our Pit (a famous poem by a Croatian poet Ivan Goran Kovačić). This is what it is: There is the Family of a Man – to rephrase the title of the famous UNESCO exhibition.
Konta has endured during these 10-15 years, alone under a millstone of his martyrdom, on a night watch, defending his and our world, refusing to be mislead by the charming sounds of fashion trends.
That is why we believe him.
Boro Pavlović, poet (1922-2001) Zagreb, 1983.
 PLAYFUL MOTIONS
The new phase of the three-dimensional experience presented by Josip Konta is characterized by playful motions. The bodies which the sculptor observes are caught in moments of spontaneous gesture and communicate their firm connection with the imaginary environment. In such an atmosphere of real and fictitious occurrences a fable emerges in the eyes of an observer, as a result of suggestive movements and natural postures.
Josip Konta belongs to a generation of young sculptors that earned recognition at the beginning of the eighties, determined in their efforts to revaluate the figurative expression. He developed the roots and influences from the Academy of Fine Arts in the workshop of August Augustinčić, and continued to gradually shape them into his individual artistic expression. Fascinated by human beings, he observes a man in a reality of everyday problems that tear him/her apart. He transforms his emotional compassion into matter, forming his characters using strong, thick and irregular clumps. Identity is of no importance to him, hence all his characters remain deprived of their individuality, but the emphasis on the principal problematic idea grows. This situation develops the desire to affix a title to the concept of totality. The process is accompanied by author's tendency to stretch figures and create a notion of physical suffering, to accentuate a contour as a specific interpreter of a spiritual condition and to open his figures to the surrounding space, demonstrating a continuous contact with the everyday life. Guided by these endeavors, the sculptor is not searching for beauty or ugliness in a human body - but the mere truth. It reveals itself in the movements of his figures, whether they reflect a spasm of the fight for existence or tenderness of a love embrace.
His cycle of figures, groups and bas-reliefs featuring essential human preoccupations expressed through realistic motions offers vast opportunities to sculptor Josip Konta for exploration in the domain of defining physical and psychological connection between the truths of life and artistic visions.
Juraj Baldani, arts critic Zagreb, 1978. |
