Ethno-house Večenaj is the birthplace of eminent croatian naive painter of Hlebine School – Ivan Večenaj. Inside the building there are more than 700 ethnographic objects, and the entire ethnographic collection, house and outbuildings are Protected Cultural Property of Republic Croatia.
Traditional house with a garden is formed as the typical traditional construction: house, two baskets for storing corn, “chamber” – Assistant building, well with bearing helmet and waterholes, barn and stables. The buildings are part of popular architecture characteristic of the garden “palace”, which is now preserved as well as all the spatial and architectural value from the time of formation, from the late 19th century.
The house, barn and workshop are equipped with the corresponding, original traditional objects of which the vast majority were still in use in the Večenaj family. In 1920 here was born Ivan Večenaj , a self-taught painter-one of the representatives of Croatian Naive Art, poet, writer and collector of folk treasures.
A collection of ethnographic objects by painter Ivan Večenaj and his son Mladen Večenaj, has 700 items that are on the point of use as the time when in the house lived a famous painter with his parents and brothers of the early 20th century.
Gallery Ivan Večenaj has expanded in 2007 and now in a representative area of 250m2 you can see a large number of paintings oil on glass and canvas, as well as drawings and watercolours museum’s worth which Ivan Večenaj preserved for future generations as well as a large number of photos of his life. Croatian Naive artist Ivan Večenaj – Tišlarov was born on May 18th 1920 in the village Gola located between the river Drava and the Hungarian border in the so-called Prekodravlje, in a peasant family, the first child of six brothers .
With a group ZEMLJA (EARTH) him at that time no one connected, and he did not know about her until after World War II when he coneccted with Ivan Generalić and Krsto Hegedušić in Hlebine. So his first exhibition was in 1954th in Koprivnica with painters from Hlebine. Since then Ivan Večenaj exhibited independently and shared throughout the world as one of the most important representatives of Hlebine School and artists of Croatian naive art.
Through 60 years of creativity most painted oil paintings on glass that are specific to the Croatian naïve inverse method of painting. Many of his paintings are in private collections, museums and galleries worldwide, including the Vatican Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome.
He has exhibited throughout Croatia and the former Yugoslavia , Milan, Turin , Paris, San Francisco, Florida , Japan, Munich, Basel , Monte Carlo, New York, etc. He has received many awards and honors .
His image – Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – came out in London THE BIBLE IN 20th CENTURY ART – where his painting was with greatest living and dead artists of the world, as well as Picasso, Chagall, Dali, Bibife, Kokoschka and others.
Author: galerijaivanvecenaj.com/en
