Art pavilion

From the text by academician Tonko Maroević on the occasion of the exhibition "Art Time Machine through 120 Years of the Art Pavilion"

At the end of 1898, at the initiative of a group of Croatian painters and sculptors, led by Bukovac and Frangeš Mihanović, the exhibition of the Croatian Salon was opened, and thus the activity of the Zagreb Art Pavilion was inaugurated. In this way, for the first time, our city received a space intended exclusively for the exhibition and popularization of fine arts, but also an ambience suitable for many festive occasions and representative occasions. From then until today, it has hosted a large number of collective and individual events, panoramic, retrospective and monographic exhibitions, mostly the highest level in our circumstances, occasionally hosting top authors from other backgrounds. We can conclude that the example of the Croatian Salon is the permanently binding heritage of the Art Pavilion, and that the institution that took its name is aware of the need to maintain and continue the anthological criteria.

On the occasion of the celebration of the high anniversary, we made a kind of representative overview of the activities of the Art Pavilion, and thus in a certain way presented the greatest achievements of Croatian fine arts. Namely, through a century and two decades, almost all the protagonists and prominent individuals of domestic painting and sculpture have paraded in it. Exhibiting independently in the Art Pavilion, either on one's own initiative or with the encouragement of art historians, has become, with rare exceptions, a measure of value, a criterion of historical verification, a sign of almost definitive affirmation. Of course, group performances or stylistic representations also contributed to the institution's reputation, as many first-class artists were also presented through collective exhibitions, but the series of individual offerings and roles in the Pavilion space is particularly impressive and truly significant, appropriate for the occasion.