Boris Bućan awarded for his exhibition held as part of the 25th MBZ
Boris Bućan has received the Forum Gallery Award for his exhibition, Portraits, held at the Ring Gallery of the Croatian Association of Artists as part of the Music Biennale 2009. The award was presented to Bućan for his extraordinary artistic achievement in the year 2009.
The award was handed out by Milan Bešlić, president of the Award Committee, whose other members were Igor Zidić, Tonko Maroević, Ante Kuduz and Eugen Kokot. Bešlić described Bućan as one of the most ingenious artists on the Croatian art scene; a fact, he said, proven by numerous prizes and awards, especially for his work in the field of graphic design, which has earned him wide international recognition.
The Forum Gallery Award consists of a plaque and a cash reward in the amount of 10 000 kuna. It was established in 2001 in celebration of the 30th anniversary of the Gallery's existence. Its first awardee was one of the Gallery's founders, Edo Murtić, and the award was later given to other significant artists such as Ivan Lovrenčić, Vatroslav Kuliš, Miroslav Šutej, Ljubo Ivančić, Joško Eterović, Đuro Seder and Petar Barišić.
Bućan has often found inspiration in musical works: he conquered the world with his legendary poster for Stravinsky's Firebird and created a painting cycle named after Ravel's cyclical composition My Mother Goose. He was also the author of the 2009 MBZ visual identity. The central theme of the festival, Art Politics, gave Bućan the idea to create little shrimps whose heads consisted of emblems of Croatian noble families and whose legs were represented by carelessly scribbled musical motifs drawn in black felt-tip pen.
The Ring Gallery showed forty portraits of renowned classical and jazz musicians as well as architects and fellow artists, topically divided into cycles of five paintings. The composers Balakirev, Glinka, Puccini, Satie, and Bellini were drawn with "rays of lightning", i.e. drawn in white on a black background. Scriabin, Verdi, Stravinsky, Monteverdi, and Haydn appeared in the form of a philodendron leaf, while five famous 20th century composers, Debussy, Kodaly, Dallapiccola, Varèse, and Bartók were created with leaves. Popular jazz musicians Ray Charles, Grachan Moncour, Ma Rainey, Dizzy Gillespie, and Keith Jarrett were depicted in the Sunflowers cycle as fiery yellow on a black background. Furthermore, Ray Charles inspired him for one of the paintings of the Wicker Chairs cycle, along with Hutcherson, Henderson, Armstrong, and Lateef, whereas Rivers, Wilson, Dina Washington, Mary Lou Williams, and Grachan Moncour were painted in the form of the grand piano. His eminent fellow artists appear in the cycles Reichstag Dome and Eiffel Tower. All of Bućan's acrylic paintings are of the same size, 140 x 140, and were created within a short period of time during 2008, thus proving his talent as well as his intimate knowledge and appreciation of music.
The painter and graphic designer Boris Bućan (Zagreb, 1947) graduated from the School of Applied Arts in Zagreb in 1967. He was admitted to the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana in the same year. He continued his education at the Academy of fine Arts in Zagreb, whence he graduated in 1972. He is the author of more than seventy one-man shows and has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad.