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Mijo Kovačić, the youngest of five children, was born on 5 August 1935 in the Podravina hamlet of Gornja Šuma, several kilometres from Molve and Hlebine. A delicate boy, Mijo spent his childhood close to his mother Ana, who passed on her imaginative strain to her son: she enriched and developed Mijo’s fancy with folk, often scary stories, which left an indelible mark on the boy. Abundance was an unknown in Podravina. One could only survive by embracing the two peasant virtues: hard work and thrift. As a child Mijo spent his days looking after the family cow in the pasture. He came to know “the soul” of his cow, and it would later accompany him as a model throughout his work. For four years Mijo attended the primary school in Molve. The daily seven kilometres which he covered on foot were not only a phase of his “accommodation to society” but also a special kind of education “in nature’s great classroom”, in which he won mastery of plant and animal life, anatomy and all other rural “courses”. In that “academy” he only had to fine-tune his painting skill. Mijo’s childhood was melancholic. Kovačić revealed his versatile talent very early on, while still a child. He wanted to continue school, but his wish could only remain an undreamt dream, Later on, in some of his pictures this lonely and withdrawn boy appeared next to a cow-drawn cart, a vat of grapes in the vineyard, sitting silently on a rung of a peasant’s cart, cuddling a cat, watching astonished from his mother’s back the world sunk in mud of the Flood. An unforgettable boy, unconsciously opposing growing up, aware that the experience of adults is a flood in which the beauty and the naiveté of the world founder. There are no winter joys in Mijo’s winters, and no child has even skated on the ice of his paintings. To put it bookishly, he was a “poet of a Shakespearean tragic bent.” Kovačić does not play with any of his subjects like a verbal juggler Kovačić treats each of his subjects seriously, and he is equally unchanging whether the theme is “frivolous” or related to a tragic event. His seriousness equates the motif of love and eroticism with any motif of life and death. In 1953, a crucial year, the eighteen-year-old peasant from Gornja Šuma first heard of Krsto Hegedušić and Ivan Generalić. Hegedušić was out of reach in faraway Zagreb, but Ivan Generalić lived in nearby Hlebine. The meeting with Generalić was not as crucial as a “school lesson” as an encouraging example: he met an uneducated peasant who had become a painter famous throughout the world! Kovačić’s wisdom did not ask for more. Thus started his long study in the “academy” of a peasant yard in Gornja Šuma. It was indeed a course of study in which the self-taught artist won the highest degree, supreme mastery. In that “academy” Kovačić was both student and teacher. In 1954, at the age of nineteen, the young painter exhibited his work for the first time in Koprivnica together with Gaži, Filipović and Večenaj. It was an encouraging and promising appearance. One of his more important encounters was certainly the one with Grgo Gamulin, the first to tackle the theory of naïve art in Croatia with no biases. Its result was the most exhaustive monograph on Kovačić’s painting (Kovačić, 1976). More than ten years later, Vladimir Maleković, excellent art naïve connoisseur and theoretician, penned another monograph (Mijo Kovačić,1989). The third monograph was published in 1999 by Kovačić’s Viennese friend and patron Peter Infeld. The three books integrated Kovačić’s painting in current Croatian and European art. Kovačić faced the great masters and their work boldly and, more often than not, with great self-confidence. “The great masters could not sway me, they observed their people and their landscapes in their own time just as I observed them in mine”, he emphasized. He “reads” them with passion and pleasure, discovers in them everything he had to discover on his own in his “academy” in Gornja Šuma. Wise and self-denying, he still creates, convinced that he has not yet produced his best painting. To read the complete biography by Josip Depolo, click here Croatian Naive Art Ivan Generalić Ivan Rabuzin Ivan Večenaj Ivan Lacković
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Mijo Kovačić rođen je 5. kolovoza 1935. kao najmlađe od petero djece, u podravskom zaseoku Gornjoj Šumi, nekoliko kilometara udaljenom od Molva i Hlebina. Osjetljivi dječak Mijo proveo je djetinjstvo vezan uz majku Anu koja je svoju maštovitost prenijela na sina: hranila je i razvijala Mijinu fantaziju pučkom naracijom, nerijetko stravična sadržaja, i to je u dječaku ostavilo neizbrisiv trag. Obilje je u podravskom kraju bilo nepoznanica. Moglo se opstati ako su se prihvatile dvije seljačke vrline: rad i štednja. Dok je bio dijete, Mijo je dane provodio uz kravu na paši. Tu je svoju kravu "upoznao u dušu" i ona će ga kasnije pratiti kao model kroz čitavo njegovo slikarstvo. Četiri razreda osnovne škole Mijo je pohađao u Molvama. Tih dnevnih sedam kilometara koje je propješačio nije bila samo faza njegova "prilagođavanja društvu", bilo je to i svojevrsno školovanje" u velikoj učionici prirode", u kojoj je uspješno svladao "tečaj" botanike, zoologije, anatomije i svih ostalih "predmeta" iz života sela. U toj mu je "akademiji" preostalo jedino perfekcioniranje slikarskog zanata. Mijino je djetinjstvo bilo melankolično. Svoju je mnogostranu darovitost očitovao vrlo rano. Želio je nastaviti školovanje, no u tegobnoj seljačkoj stvarnosti to je morao ostati nedosanjan san. Kasnije se na nekim njegovim slikama pojavljivao taj osamljeni i povučeni seoski dječak uz kravlju zapregu, uz kacu s grožđem u vinogradu, na prečki seljačkih kola ili kako stišče uza se mačka svog djetinjstva, ili kako na leđima majke začuđeno promatra svijet koji tone u blatu Općeg potopa. Nezaboravni dječak koji se nesvjesno odupirao odrastanju, jer je znao da je iskustvo odraslih potop u kojem tonu ljepota i naivnost svijeta. U Mijinim zimama nema zimskih radosti, na ledu njegovih slika nikada se nije sklizalo ni jedno dijete. On je, reklo bi se "knjiški", bio pjesnik "šekspirskog tragičnog usmjerenja". Mijo se ni s jednim svojim motivom ne igra poput verbalističkog žonglera, Pred svakim je svojim motivom Mijo ozbiljan, podjednako je nepotkupljiv kada je u pitanju tzv. "frivolna" tema, kao i ona vezana uz tragična zbivanja. U njemu ta ozbiljnost izjednačava motiv ljubavi i erotike s bilo kojim motivom života i smrti. Presudne 1953. osamnaestogodišnji seljak iz Gornje Šume prvi se put susreće s imenima Krste Hegedušića i Ivana Generalića. Hegedušić je u dalekom Zagrebu nedostižan, ali Ivan Generalić živi u susjednim Hlebinama. Susret s njim nije bio presudan toliko kao "školska poduka" koliko kao ohrabrujući primjer: pred njim je stajao neškolovan seljak koji je postao poznat i proslavljen slikar u svijetu! Mijinoj mudrosti nije ni bilo potrebno više od te spoznaje. I tako je započeo njegov dugogodišnji studij u "akademiji" seoskog dvorišta u Gornjoj Šumi. To je bio stvarni studij u kojem je samouki slikar stekao najviše zvanje, najviši stupanj majstorstva. Godine 1954. mladi slikar izlaže prvi put u Koprivnici s Gažijem, Filipovićem i Večenajem. Bio je to ohrabrujući i obećavajući nastup. Među važnijim Mijinim susretima svakako je susret s Grgom Gamulinom (1964.), koji je prvi u Hrvatskoj bez predrasuda prišao teoriji naivne umjetnosti. Rezultirao je najiscrpnijim monografskim djelom o Mijinu slikarstvu (Kovačić, 1976.). Više od jednog desetljeća poslije, objavljeno je drugo monografsko djelo iz pera Vladimira Malekovića, (Mijo Kovačić, 1989.), a 1999. i treće, u izdanju Kovačićeva bečkog prijatelja i mecene Petera Infelda. Ta su tri djela ugradila slikarstvo Mije Kovačića u hrvatsku i europsku umjetnost naših dana. S velikim se majstorima i njihovim djelima Kovačić suočavao hrabro i nerijetko vrlo samopouzdano. "Veliki me majstori nisu mogli skrenuti, oni su gledali svoje ljude i pejzaže u svom vremenu, kao što ih ja gledam u ovom svom", naglašavao je. On ih "čita" sa strašću i uživanjem, otkriva u njima sve ono što je sam morao otkrivati u svojoj "akademiji" u Gornjoj Šumi. Mudar i samozatajan, stvara i danas, uvjeren da još nije naslikao najbolju sliku. Ovdje možete pročitati cjelovit životopis koji potpisuje Josip Depolo. Hrvatski slikari naivne umjetnosti Ivan Generalić Ivan Rabuzin Ivan Večenaj Ivan Lacković