Zoran Mušič

Zoran Mušič (12 February 1909 – 25 May 2005), baptised as Anton Zoran Musič, was a Slovene painter, printmaker, and draughtsman.

He was the only painter of Slovene descent who managed to establish himself in the elite cultural circles of Italy and France, particularly Paris in the second half of the 20th century, where he lived for most of his later life.

He painted landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and self-portraits, as well as scenes of horror from the Dachau concentration camp and vedute of Venice.

Zoran Mušič was born in a Slovene-speaking family in Bukovica, a small village in the Vipava Valley near Gorizia, in what was then the Austrian County of Gorizia and Gradisca (now in Slovenia).

Mušič's father Anton was the headmaster of the local school, and his mother Marija (née Blažič) was a teacher there.

Both parents were Slovenes from the Goriška region: his father was from the village of Šmartno in the Gorizia Hills – Brda Collio, and his mother was born in the hamlet of Kostanjevica in the village of Lig.

Mušič's father was mobilized and served on various battlefields during the First World War.

In 1915, during the Battles of the Isonzo, the family (his mother with two children) was forced to flee to Arnače, a village near Velenje in the Duchy of Styria, where Zoran attended elementary school.

In the spring of 1918, toward the end of World War I, the family moved back to Gorizia, but they were expelled again in late August 1919 by the Italian authorities, which had occupied the region.

They moved to Griffen in Carinthia, but were expelled once again by the Austrian authorities after the Carinthian Plebiscite in late October 1920.

They finally settled in Lower Styria, then part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

Mušič attended two high schools in Maribor till September 1928.

After, he visited Vienna for a short time.

Between 1930 and 1935 he continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.

Mušič spoke Slovene, German, Croatian, Italian, French and some Friulian.

After graduation in 1934, he travelled extensively around Europe.

He spent three months (April to June 1935) in Spain, mainly Madrid.

Later he served his obligatory army service in Bileća (November 1935 to July 1936) in Yugoslavia.

Later he spent each summer in Dalmatia while being based in Maribor and nearest village Hoče.

In 1940, he moved to Ljubljana permanently.

During this period (1942), he painted in two churches in his native Goriška region, together with his friend, painter Avgust Černigoj (Drežnica, Grahovo) and later one in village Gradno with another Slovenian painter Lojze Spacal.

In October 1943, he moved to Trieste and for some weeks for the first time to Venice.

He had his first one-man show (outside Yugoslavia) in Trieste and several months later in Venice.

In early October 1944, he was arrested by the Nazi German forces because he was in a group of Slovene anti-fascists.

The group had hidden transmitter and was connected with British IS.

His drawing and painting in Venice raised suspicions that he was a spy, and a month later he was sent to Dachau concentration camp, where he made more than 180 sketches of life in the camp, some under extremely difficult circumstances.

From the drawings, mainly executed in May 1945, he managed to save around one hundred (some more with his friends).

After liberation by Americans on April 29, 1945, Mušič returned to his hometown Ljubljana in early June.

There, he was sent to a hospital (Golnik).

A month later he was subjected to the pressures by the newly established communist regime and moved to Gorizia at the end of July 1945.

In the following months he travelled in the area of Trieste and Istria, spending some time in Pinguente (Buzet).

In October 1945 he settled in Venice with the help of family Cadorin and returned to the painting.

In September 1949 he married the Venetian painter Ida Cadorin Barbarigo there.

He also painted a room in Vila Dornacher near Zuerich at the same period.

In 1950 he prepared huge tapestry: Marco Polo and his way to China for the passenger ship Augustus.

In 1951 he was awarded the Prix de Paris, (jointly with Antonio Corpora) for his colorful paintings of Dalmatia.

After 1952 he lived mainly in Paris, where the 'lyrical abstraction' of the French Informel determined the art world.

At the same time he won the Gualino prize and in 1956 the Grand Prize for his printmaking at the Venice Biennale.

Throughout this period he kept his studio in Venice and exhibited again at the Biennale in 1960, when he was awarded the UNESCO Prize.

The much acclaimed series We Are Not the Last, in which the artist transformed the terror of his experiences in the concentration camp into documents of universal tragedy, was made in the 1970s.