“The Fairy of My People” (1911).

The metaphoric nature of Jurkić’s art, marked by symbols that evoke strong associations, justify Jurkić’s historical place during the Secession era, in this part of the world. It is a completely new alternative to Symbolism. His particularly bold concept is a series of medieval Bosnian tombstones (stećak) lined up along the slopes of the Bosnian mountains. For example, by composing emblematic historic symbols, featuring an extraordinarily beautiful folk fairy born out of hidden past, with Botticellian inventiveness, Jurkić has used the inherent connotations and their associative nature in order to create an unmistakable Symbolism in his work. His paintings are morphologically interesting, due to a diffused light which he achieves through a decomposition of the colour tones on his paintings. With this precedent, he has even gone a one step further: differentiating his technique from Impressionism or Pointillism to portray Bukovac’s provenance; it is, rather, Jurkić’s own and original ascension, “a consistent precedent, logically linked to a clearly defined symbolism”. By applying this technique, Jurkić has achieved a double effect: a convincing illusion of reality, an notion of a birth of a new day (with long shadows and reflections of dew in the grass) and has ultimately captured a fascinating and powerful symbolism of space and its passage through time.

Ivanka Reberski, Catalogue of the exhibition of Gabriel Jurkić, Klovićevi Dvori Gallery, Zagreb, 2005, p. 28