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Zoran Music

"I paint with a minimum of means. There is a sort of silence that is perhaps a characteristic aspect of my work."

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Notes of biography

Zoran Music was born in 1909 in the village of Bukovica near Gorica in Dalmatia, formerly part of the Austrian-Hungarian empire, now day part of Slovenia. At the beginning of the 1920’s he studies in Maribor, then the school of Fine Arts in Zagreb (1930-1934). His teacher introduces him to the works of George Grosz and Otto Dix. He takes several trips to Poland, Austria and Spain. During summer 1935 he visits the Prado in Madrid; Music reproduces works of Goya, El Greco and Valasques.
Between 1936 and 1941 the artist stays in Korcula in Dalmatia during his summer months, where he studies frescoes of popular inspiration. His first solo exhibit is in 1938. Music visits Austria and Poland, then settles in Venice in 1942.
Accused of belonging to the Resistance, he is arrested in Venice and deported to Dachau where he remained from November 1944 till 1945. There, he created hundreds of drawings of what he saw. This period of captivity and suffering will determine his future works.
Returning to Venice in fall 1945, sick, he resumes his motifs of before the war, canvases almost abstract, inspired by landscapes and scenes of his native countryside in a range of brown, ochre and orange and starts a series of self-portraits. After his stay in Venice and Switzerland he settles in Paris in 1952, while still keeping his studio in Venice. His next themes are  “Dalmatian Land” in 1958, “Plant Motifs” in 1972, “Rocky Landscapes” in 1976, “Venetian Landscapes” in 1980, and “Cathedral Interiors” in 1984. If the artist is in quest of silence and serenity, he can not resist the haunting memory of deportation.
Between 1970 and 1975, Zoran Music will go back to the camp where he was stayed. He engraves and paints an untitled series “We are not the Last”. There is a paradox between beauty, the extreme sensibility of his technique and the unbearable that the artist represents.
In 1972, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris devotes the first large scale retrospective of Zoran Music. In 1995, he is part of the French selection for the centenarian of the Venice Biennial. The biennial where the artist first exhibited in 1948. He divided his time thus between Paris and Venise.
Zoran Music, at the age of 96, passed away in 2005. Similar to Schiele, Kokoschka but also Goya, Zoran Music is the heir to the works of sorrowful and suffering bodies. He passes on his testimony equipped with a whole palette of artistic instruments

Artists on display

The art and the artists display: proclamations, galleries, museums, personal or collective exhibitions. On walls or in shop windows, wise or rebels, posters warn, argue, show. Some were specially conceived by an artist for such or such event, other, colder, have only the letter.

Some were created in lithographic technic, most are simple offset reproductions. They are many those who like collecting these rectangles of paper, monochrome or in games of colours, in matt paper or brilliant, with many words or almost dumb.

We are happy also to be able to greet, by this pages, mythical galleries as those of Denise René, Louis Carré, Claude Bernard, Berheim Jeune, Maeght, Pierre Loeb and others.

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Complete work(s)

Complete work(s)
All the complete works

Bibliographic track and more

To read about the artist :
  • « Zoran Music », J. Grenier, Ed. Le Musée de Poche, Paris, 1970
  • « Zoran Music », Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1972
  • « Zoran Music », préface d'A. Chastel, cat. d'expo., Galerie Claude Bernard, 198
  • « Zoran Music, l’oeuvre graphique », J. Clair, MNAM, Paris, 1988
  • « Zoran Music », cat. d'expo., Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, Paris, 1995
  • « Zoran Music, Entretiens 1988-1998 », Michael Pepiatt, Ed. L'Échoppe, 2000
  • « La barbarie ordinaire, Music à Dachau », Jean Clair, Ed. Gallimard, 2001
  • « Zoran Music, Rétrospective », Jean Clair, Ed. Cinq Continents, 2003
  • « Zoran Music », Sophie Pujas, Ed. Gallimard, Collection L'un et l'autre, 2013
  • « Zoran Music », Boualem Sansal/Bruck, Ed. Skira, 2016
To read from the artist :
  • « Nous ne sommes pas les derniers », Cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen, 1995
  • « Entretien avec Z. Music », propos recueillis par P.G. Person, dans L'Œil, no 473, 1995
Website :
No website dedicated to the artist.

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Beyond works currently in stock, it seemed to me useful to combine business with pleasure by letting you discover others works by artists in my gallery. These artworks, now sold or removed from our website, have been in our stock in the past.

These pages will undoubtedly make it possible for some of you to associate an image with its title or the other way round, for others it will be a good time to discover more on such and such artist. For the sake of confidentiality – the pieces being no longer available – we won't display neither their numbering or their price. For whatever reason, make sure to visit this amazing art database with to date 6441 online works just for your pleasure! Michelle Champetier

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