VENICE – Safet Zecan internationally renowned Bosnian painter and engraver, is one of the protagonists of Biennale Arte 2024. His participation in the Venice Pavilion “Foreigners Everywhere” it is a tribute to his talent and his deep connection with the lagoon city that welcomed him as a refugee in 1992 fleeing the war in Bosnia.
Zec was born in Rogatica, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in 1943. After completing his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, he developed a successful artistic career in Yugoslavia. However, his life was turned upside down by the outbreak of the war in Bosnia in 1992. Forced to flee his native country, Zec found refuge in Venice, where he resumed his artistic activity with renewed vigor.
“I would like to remember that I was a refugee -he claims the artist -, a man who had to abandon the country he loved, the country where he was born, lived, educated, studied… a country torn apart by war and nationalism. In Yugoslavia I had established myself and acquired a prestigious position in the world of painting, which today is equally recognized by Venice, my beloved adopted city”.
The artist’s atelier in the heart of the Biennale
Zec wanted to recreate his atelier inside the Venice Pavilion, an intimate and personal space where the artist conceived and created numerous works. By visiting this space, the public has the opportunity to immerse themselves in Zec’s creative atmosphere and appreciate the tools of his trade up close.
The exhibition presents a selection of works that retrace Zec’s artistic career, from his most recent works to those of his Yugoslavian period. Among the most significant works, Man and little girl (2017), a touching painting that represents the artist’s cry of pain against the horror of warand a series of outstretched hands symbolizing humanity’s search for help and comfort.
Crossing the threshold of the atelier, you enter a physical and at the same time interior place, a portal to the soul of an artist without time and patterns. To the center of this creative microcosm, the work table, reproduced in a large evolving canvas, reflects the real one where brushes, colours, pencils, tempera, burins, dry tips and palettes meet in a harmony of tools that give life to art. From this symphony of objects, Zec extracts the deepest essence, the spark that animates each of his creations.
The works on display, from oils to tempera, from pencil drawings to sketches and preparatory studies, from large paintings to small canvases, tell the artistic story of Zec from his arrival in Venice to today. Every brushstroke, every stroke, every nuance is an emotion, a memory, a fragment of life that takes shape on the canvasimmediately involving the observer in a whirlwind of emotions.
In this atelier of memory, you can breathe the essence of an artist who transformed pain into art, suffering into beauty, diaspora into a new creative homeland. Safet Zec is a storyteller, a witness to his time, a master who invites us to look at the world with new eyes, to grasp the poetry in the ordinary, to find hope even in the darkness.
A painting full of pathos and humanity
Zec’s painting stands out for its expressive strength, its emotional charge and its profound humanity. His works explore a wide range of themes, from beauty of nature to the pain of war, from exile to hope. Through his expert use of color and matter, Zec manages to create images that capture the essence of the human experience.
Safet Zec’s painting, an all-encompassing vocation, which the artist wants to share with the public in this space “domestic and emotional” of creation, his studio, which becomes a place for meeting, exchanging and sharing, “fIt flows with the uncontainability of a river in flood, powerful and composite, lyrical or tragic, painful or joyful. Because this is precisely the impression one gets when approaching his work: the tumultuous impetus of solid, epic and classic, profound and dreamlike writing...” – as stated by Giandomenico Romanelli.
“I have always experienced art – points out Zec – clike a religion, with total dedication. I have always had blind faith in the value of art and in the values that only the artist’s work can convey through a language without barriers.”
“Zec’s human and artistic journey – explains Stefano Zuffi – it developed along the Adriatic: first on the Balkan shore, then in Venice. It is not only a journey through geography, but also through history: that of individual events, along the decades with which the twentieth century ended and the new millennium opened; and that of centuries of art, deeply loved and intensely relived in Zec’s style.”
An internationally recognized artist
Zec has received numerous awards and recognition for his art. His works are exhibited in important museums and private collections around the world. Zec’s participation in the 2024 Art Biennale is an important recognition of his artistic value and his contribution to the art world.
