Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, February 20, 2021: Ivan Rabuzin, a Croatian naïve artist (#1212)

Saturday, February 20, 2021

Artist of the Day, February 20, 2021: Ivan Rabuzin, a Croatian naïve artist (#1212)

Ivan Rabuzin (1921 –2008) was a Croatian naïve artist. French art critic Anatole Jakovsky described him in 1972 as "one of the greatest naïve painters of all times and countries".

Rabuzin's father was a miner, and Ivan was the sixth of his eleven children. Ivan worked as a carpenter for many years, and did not begin painting until 1956, when he was thirty-five years old. He had little formal training as an artist, but his first solo exhibition in 1960 proved successful and he changed careers, becoming a professional painter in 1962. His 1963 exhibition in Galerie Mona Lisa in Paris marked the beginning of the rise of his international reputation.

Rabuzin's art is characterized by dense geometric patterns of vegetation and clouds that form rich, arabesque-like structures painted in gentle pastel colors. His motifs were described as an "idealistic reconstruction of the world". He took a stab at industrial design in the 1970s with a 500-piece run of the upscale Suomi tableware by Timo Sarpaneva that Rabuzin decorated for the German Rosenthal porcelain maker's Studio Linie.

Rabuzin was active in politics as a member of Croatian Democratic Union, and from 1993 to 1999 he was also a member of the Croatian Parliamen.

Rabuzin stopped painting in 2002 due to an illness.

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