Wednesday, 7 October 2026 at 7 pm
Film screening and discussion
This year marks the centenary of the birth of Miljenko Stančić, a Croatian painter and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. On this occasion, at the Cultural and Information Centre on 7 October 2026 at 7 pm, we will screen the Zagreb Television documentary Miljenko Stančić from 1987, directed by Mira Wolf, who also co-wrote the film with Irena Vrkljan.
Miljenko Stančić (Varaždin, 1926 – Zagreb, 1977) was one of the most significant Croatian painters of the second half of the 20th century. He graduated in painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1949. From 1961 until his early death, he taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. His oeuvre is characterised by a uniquely introspective poetics in which the pictorial scene is a space of memory, dreams, associations and inner experiences. His surviving paintings connect the experiences of the old masters (for example, Vermeer or Georges de La Tour) with a modern sensibility and elements of the surreal. Precise modelling, a subdued tonal scale, unusual lighting and a melancholic atmosphere create Stančić's world, which appears both real and dreamlike.
"At dusk, beyond the light, in a devilish twilight, in a filthy beggars' tavern, a flickering grey light through the window, Stančić's clair-obscur: sitting there are three of them, dark men, in a confidential conversation, unshaven, in dirty rags, crumpled, somewhat former men, tramps, untrustworthy beings, with disturbed, bird-like eyes. 'What now?' Here we have settled ourselves in this corner over a litre of wine," wrote the great Miroslav Krleža, recalling Stančić's motifs that deeply define our reality, in his experimental Notes from the Tržić. Read on…
After the film, we will hold a short discussion with its director Mira Wolf, art historian Igor Zidić, and painter and close friend of Miljenko Stančić, Zlatko Kauzlarić Atač.
The discussion will be moderated by the director of the Forum Gallery, Feđa Gavrilović.
The film screening was organised in collaboration with Croatian Radiotelevision.