The Collection to the People: Jerica Ziherl

Antun Motika: Portrait of the Artist in His Youth The lecture focuses on Antun Motika’s formative years in Istria, exploring the complex, multilayered, multiethnic and multicultural context of the region at the time of his birth, childhood and education. Particular attention is given to the origins and genealogy of the artist’s family name, the family’s relationship to the social, political and economic structures of the time, and the formative influences that led Motika towards art. The lecture offers a broader view of a particular “fragment” of history which, although relatively short in duration, was marked by a succession of turbulent changes and rapidly shifting circumstances that profoundly transformed the lives and destinies of families and individuals. Drawing on archival, memoir and printed sources, the lecture sheds light on this Istrian “wartime–peacetime chaos” as a crucial starting point for understanding the later developments that shaped the artist’s worldview and artistic practice. Jerica Ziherl, PhD, is an art historian, curator and museum advisor with extensive professional experience. She completed her doctoral dissertation on “Antun Motika – The Period from 1930 to 1953 (From the ‘École de Paris’ to an ‘Intimist’ Conception of Modernism).” Over the course of her career, she has conceived and curated numerous solo and thematic exhibitions in Croatia and abroad. She is the author of an extensive body of scholarly and professional articles, as well as monographs on visual art. Her work also includes the development and management of international and inter-institutional projects dedicated to the research, interpretation and presentation of modern and contemporary visual art.