Ujević-Galetović Marija, F.C.A.

Deceased Members VII. Department of Fine Arts
Ujević-Galetović Marija

Born:

  • October 20, 1933, in Zagreb

Deceased:

  • March 13, 2923, in Zagreb

Ujević-Galetović Marija, F.C.A.

Deceased Members VII. Department of Fine Arts

Academic titles:

  • Fellow of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Institutions:

  • Professor, retired – Academy of Fine Arts Zagreb

Membership in Academy:

  • full member – Department of Fine Arts (05/28/1998 – 03/13/2023)
  • associate member – Department of Fine Arts (05/17/1990 – 05/28/1998)

Marija Ujević-Galetović, Croatian sculptor and painter, was born on October 20, 1933 in Zagreb. She graduated in 1958 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (F. Kršinić), where she has been a professor since 1987.
Since 1998. she is a full member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in the Department of Fine Arts. She received the Vladimir Nazor Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012.

Marija Ujević-Galetović is one of the main successors of the Croatian figurative sculpture tradition, connecting it with contemporary and avant-garde understandings.

In the early 1960s, she approached pop art and new figuration; she purified the shapes and emphasized the expressiveness of various materials (alabaster, porcelain, bronze, polyester, aluminum).
She shaped portraits as sculptural metaphors reliant on natural forms (F. Kafka, 1979), and in volumes of sharp edges and distinctive stylization she was close to Cubism (A. G. Matoš, 1979). Rhythmic contrasts of light and shadow achieved expressiveness, and color achieved the metaphysical meaning of the statue (Meta, 1979).

In the 1980s, she formed postmodernist sculptures (Melania, 1988; Boots, 1989).

In the latter works, she synthesized her experiences using classical and modern associations (Runner, 1995; Cat, 2009).

In the figures of Miroslav Krleža in Osijek and Zagreb, with psychological analysis, she achieved an ingenious connection between plastic and space.

She is the author of several public monuments (Vlaho Paljetak, 1987, and August Šenoa, 1988, in Zagreb) and religious sculptures of pure volumes and deliberate ambiental solutions (Ascension in the Church of St. Nicholas in Rijeka, St. Francis in Visoko).

In the latter period, she paints imaginative compositions in acrylic (Isto i drugačije, 2005; Pas i čovjek, 2012).

URBAN PORTRAITS of Marija Ujević-Galetović, Essay by  Željka Čorak