Graphic Art Show by Antun Mateš

A graphic art show by Antun Mateš opened Friday, April 15, 2011 at the Hotel Olympia in Vodice. The show is a present from the Vodice Easter Regatta.

The artist Antun Mateš was born in Zagreb on November 23, 1945. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in the class of Professor M. Stančić.  For decades he has been referred to as the most Zagreb-inspired painter thanks to many vedute of Zagreb that show the intimate atmosphere of his memories of Zrinjevac and the Croatian National Theatre, uptown and downtown Zagreb and silhouettes of Tomislavac and Ilica painted in the sfumato style.

Today Antun Mateš deserves to be described as one of the most European, even worldly Croatia's modern painters thanks to his "Zagreb Walks" (one of the artist's six graphic art maps) he later complemented with "European Walks" comprising the beautiful vistas of Paris, London, Venice and other European and world metropolises.

When creating Mateš still uses traditional graphic techniques of deep print, limiting the number of copies, but welcomes new technologies as a good tool for spreading information about artistic happenings in the world and the way the people of today communicate.

He paints aquarelles and aquatints; themes are mostly landscapes and vedute - mostly of his hometown Zagreb and other Croatian towns and European and world cities.

With dim colours he translates the flickering ambiance of town streets, squares and parks. He is the author of several very successful and technically outstanding graphic art maps and by now his solo exhibitions have taken place at venues in Bjelovar, Zagreb, Karlovac, Melbourne, Split, Osijek and Mainz.