Slavko Kopac (1913-1995)

Born in 1913 in Croatia, where he trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, Slavko Kopač has been associated by and large with his role as the curator of the Collection de l’Art Brut, founded by Jean Dubuffet. Yet the Croatian artist left behind a fecund body of work on par with the complexity of the century it spanned. Emigrating to Italy in 1943, then settling in Paris in 1948, where he crossed paths with the surrealists, he enlisted the most unexpected techniques and materials in the service of a poetics of the marvelous.

The techniques Kopač employed included myriad experiments with unusual or repurposed materials. The washes, watercolors, charcoals, markers, pencil drawings are handled both masterfully and with a nearly automatic gesture, while the ceramics and enameled earthenware are illuminated with pigmented glazes. The viewer cannot determine the physical weight of the sculptures since one never knows if the work in question is made of brick, concrete, or paper mâché. The bestiary and the flora Kopač invokes are equally poignant because they populate the compositions with a harmonious world that can only be found in fairytales and popular legends.

Kopač’s modesty, his solitary, antisocial, and somewhat secretive personality contributed in large part to his being eclipsed. Jean Dubuffet portrayed him in 1982 as a friend with the perfect profile completely outside of professional artistic circuits, with total disregard for monetary gain and self-promotion, and intent on living the reclusive life of a loner. It goes without saying that his oeuvre can only be situated in an unidentified zone, an indeterminate place, uncharted territory.