Archivio Conz

Josip Vaništa (1924 Karlovac, Croatia [former Yugoslavia] – 2018 Zagreb, Croatia) was an influential painter, graphic designer, writer, and academic. Like the other members of the Gorgona Group, he attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. The dichromatic paintings produced in the 1960s stand out in their minimalism, rendered by thin horizon lines on homogeneous backgrounds. The painting Black Line on a Silver Background (1965) from the same period was the focus of the action Deposition from 1986. The performance, conceived by Vaništa and carried out together with Radoslav Putar and Marijan Jevšovar, involved leaving the painting in the snow until it gradually disappeared into the landscape. The action, progressively documented, revoked the existentialist themes of disappearance and immateriality characteristic of the Gorgona Group. Later paintings mark a return to figurative depiction and, in particular, to traditional still lifes and landscapes. Vaništa was a professor in the architecture department at the University of Zagreb until 1994. His work has been exhibited worldwide, and an extensive retrospective was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb in 2013.