(1919-1997)
“Everything is a sculpture.” – Branko Ruzic
Ruzic, people, wood, NFS
A prominent Croatian painter, sculptor and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb. Ružić has acquired a degree in sculpting at Academy of Fine Arts to study sculpture in 1940, after which he began a four–year painting course and has received a degree in painting in 1948. In the next couple of years, he successfully participated in numerous exhibitions (Lyon, Bern…), but soon found painting to be less and less fulfilling when he dedicated himself to sculpting.
The pianist, bronze, 1993, NFS
He made his sculptures in various techniques including wood, bronze, plaster of Paris, copper plate, terracotta, stone, and paper. With his condensed forms, suggestive profiling and architectural volumes in which he overcomes the general over the individual he joined the trend of renewal in Croatian sculpture in the 1950s.
The motifs of Ružić’s sculptures are varied: figures, portraits, sequences, groups, motifs from nature. His works are characterized by simplicity and monumentality, and sometimes by specific deformations that carry a strain of humor and irony.
In his career Ružić held more than one hundred solo and two hundred collective exhibitions in Croatia and abroad. He won many recognitions and awards in Croatia and abroad. In 1964 Ružić exhibited his sculpture at the 32nd Venice Biennale where an international jury awarded his work with the prize for sculpture from the “David Bright Foundation”, which makes him the only Croat ever to win a prize at the Venice Biennale. His works are exhibited at many galleries and museums but most of his opus stayed within his family and the Ružić gallery in Slavonski Brod, Croatia.