Marijan Detoni Artwork valuations, appraisals and auction estimates

Marijan Detoni (1905 - 1981) was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb from 1924 to 1928, attending the graphics course with Professor T. Križman. Read the full biography

Marijan Detoni (1905 - 1981) was a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb from 1924 to 1928, attending the graphics course with Professor T. Križman. He was a member of a group of artists called Zemlja (Earth) with whom he held some exhibitions from 1931 to 1934. He took some additional painting courses in Paris (in 1933). In 1942 he joined the communist Partisan Resistance Movement, painting the images linked to it, and writing about it in his diary. He was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (1945-1975), head of the graphics department and a member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts. In his early works, Detoni turns his attention to spatial relationships. He was influenced by Paul Cézanne while his paintings of the later period (1929 to 1935) reflect social issues. The images of everyday life are presented with humor and grotesqueness, and he relies on elements such as color and space. Painting the landscape more realistically, using simple drawings and lines, he creates specific landscape paintings featuring large figures painted in just a few colors. In the second period of his works (1936 - 1942) Marijan uses infinite possibilities of color expression. He was a pioneer of abstract painting in Croatia. Upon his return from Paris (1939) he took on a modernist pictorial style, and returned to painting scenes of local life. In the period from 1942 to 1952 he made several paintings of war scenes and after the Second World War (1952 - 1980) he began to paint in the Expressionist style which deals with a wide range of subjects, from war scenes to poetic reminiscences. He has held solo exhibitions throughout Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.