Mijo Kovačić, Shepherd, painting on glass (oil on glass), signed and dated, 1999. Dimensions: 75 x 65 cm (+ frame).

Mijo Kovačić (Gornja Šuma, 1935) is one of the most important Croatian naive painters. He showed an extraordinary talent for painting as a child, but his family could not afford further education. At the age of eighteen, he met the already established painter Ivan Generalić in the neighboring village of Hlebine. In 1954, Kovačić had his first exhibition. He exhibited at 300 group and around 100 solo exhibitions around the world.

Given that he grew up near the Drava River, water became one of his main motifs. M. Kovačić is aware of the inseparable, sometimes destructive connection between man and nature, a connection that he covers with a veil of mystery, making him a master of mood paintings as well as portraits. The strong caricature of his extremely precisely detailed and psychologically defined portraits grows out of the actual environment of their creation, as they live “between worlds”, in an imaginary space between civilized man and untamed nature, which leaves an indelible mark on them.