GECAN, Vilko

(Kuželj near Brod on Kupa, Croatia, 1894 – Zagreb, Croatia, 1973)

In Zagreb, he attended T. Krizman’s private painting school, and in Munich M. Heymanns private school alongside the Academy (E. Heckel). Gecan was decisively influenced by works of M. Kraljević.

During the First World War and while being held in captivity he created a series of drawings and prints filled with expressionist charge. Strong expressionist features can also be found in oil paintings from the 1920s, which help make him the central figure of expressionist efforts in Croatian painting.

Some of these works show his cubo-constructivist orientation, but Gecan remains an expressionist with a special feeling for the grotesque, hallucinatory and strange. He stayed in America from 1924 to 1932. After that his palette became brighter and his brushstroke juicier. At this point in time more portraits, works of still life and landscapes are created. These works show that he is closer to the coloristic intimacy then to earlier expressionist tendencies. He won the award “Vladimir Nazor” for lifetime achievement (1966).