Appenzeller Zeitung
6 July 1985
ENCOURAGEMENT WITH PAINTINGS
Paintings, drawings and sketches of the Croatian painter Franjo Hoti are exhibited in the Gallery Fünfländerblick, street Grab-Unterbilchen. The exhibition lasts until 3. July.
Franjo Hoti was born in 1931, in a small village in northern Croatia, there where river Drava forms a border to Hungary. He himself has ancestors of Hungarien origin. After graduating the Pedagogical Academy he taught art for 10 years in differrent places of Croatia. At the age of 30 he quit his job and devoted himself totally to art. He was awarded his own atelier in 1974 in Zagreb, where he lives eversince. In 1965 one art-critic from Göttingen discovered Franjo Hoti, whose work was exhibited only in his homeland till then. Soon after his exhibitions follow in Western Europe, in Germany, Belgium and Switzerland.
MONUMENTAL
One can notice the monumentality on the big canvases of Franjo Hoti at first sight. The figures are compressed into blocks which appear as portraits to the viewer. One family in a solemn pose gathered at the table; three corpulent women with grapes in their hands which discover their activity; the musicians with their instruments in hands stilted in geometrical order...
They all fill in completely the format of the painting. There is no space for surplusness which could divert the attention from the theme.
„To present human characters in a modern form“ – that is Hoti's aspiration for 30 years already. Peasant origin of the artist with aristocratic looks defines the themes: people and their work.
„The Miller“ – Hoti's favorite painting – prepares the mill-stone with his knobby hands. The peasant girl squats over plants.
„The milkmaid“ stirs up butter.
It is not just a movement which Hoti grasped in his paintings. His people are petrified monuments, halted for eternity in one moment of their lives. „Deseeding the pumpkin“ presents a female holding a pumpkin in her lap, the shining pumpkin as a symbol of fertility in the centre of the painting. There is a „Calabash saleswoman“ in a solemn pose. „The Tinsmith“ is full of strength and determination with huge tin-plates growing like wings on his back. „The human architectonics“ fascinates Franjo Hoti. His host Bruno Keel rightly observes in these works „the two-dimensional sculptures“, which remind him of lithography of Ernest Barlach.
HOTI ENCOURAGES US
The painter shows another side of life in paintings of small formats. Old men who smoke gaze thoughtfully into far distance (in one painting which significantly has the title „Conversation“), young blonde girls who pose in their summer-dresses, masks and clowns of the famous Samobor costume fair, a lad courting young beauty. She resists him with a smile. Scences from lives of the ordinary people. Hoti encourages us with them. Courage for life, for the present moment. The colours are strong. Glowing red, orange, green, blue in sharp contrast. There is something agressive in the paintings despite the static theme, intensified by thick strokes of bright, acrylic colours. Besides there are paintings with subdued colours, brown hues, which whow painters ties to Croatian homeland. All paintings sprang up during the last ten years. The collection is completed with the sketches and studies of small formats of young Franjo Hoti exhibited in the basement of the Gallery.
EVALUATION
In the opening speech Ulrich Peplinski, politologist at the University of Konstanz by profession, and a hobby-painter, connoisseur of art, gave the introduction to Hoti's work.
„Modern, magic realism, in the original combination of modern in colours and realism in the forms“.
Peplinski sees strong connection with the traditional naive art in themes, but the painter distances himself from naive art in his original style. That is probably the reason why Franjo Hoti is considered as a „black sheep“ inside the Yugoslav art area. But here in Appenzeller he fits in harmoniously.
Exhibition lasts till 3. July.
Opening hours: Monday to Friday, 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Translation from German to English: Dr. sc. A. Andraši
