Friday 21 June 2024, a Ducal Palace of Genoa, meeting with the artist Živa Kraus, a charismatic figure of a Croatian naturalized Italian artist and gallery owner. The event takes place at 5.30 pm in the Sala Camino. The writer, literary critic and art historian, translator of Slavic languages, Silvio Ferrari and contemporary art criticism Viana Conti. Free admission, until all available places are filled. Meeting in collaboration with the Primo Levi Cultural Center.
Figure of painter, designer, early researcher in the area of international photographic language, Živa Kraus was born in Zagreb to a Jewish family, has resided and worked in Venice since 1971, the city in which he founded Ikona Photo Gallery in 1979 – a name that reflects its potential as a sacred image – the first avant-garde photographic gallery in Venice, initially in San Marco Ponte of S. Moisè, subsequently in Campo del Ghetto Nuovo, Cannaregio; founded in 1989 Ikona Venezia International School of Photography.
An irreducible woman and artist, Živa is a name which, in Slavic mythology, means life, existence: a name therefore in which a destiny is already written. A publication, entitled Živa Kraus Artist – Pièces Uniques, Tides publisher, documents the solo exhibition in Unimedia Space – Contemporary Art Genoa, and traces a journey of extraordinary encounters with artists, photography stars, art critics, museum directors, university professors, writers and poets, directors and musicians, who have marked his life as, to name just three, for example, Peggy Guggenheim, Gillo Dorfles, Alberto Moravia. Alberto Moravia writes about her, introducing her in the exhibition: «Kraus is a realist of the invisible, no more and no less than Courbet and Guttuso, 1979, are realists of the visible».
We perceive in the work and life of Živa Kraus the paradigm of travel as an archetype of nomadism.
