353 - Izvor Pende, Woman by the Sea, oil painting from 2002

Izvor Pende, Woman by the Sea, oil painting from 2002 Izvor Pende, born 1976 in Zagreb, lives and works in Dubrovnik and Düsseldorf; a Croatian artist who is one of the leading figures in his country’s contemporary painting scene, shown here: Woman by the Sea, oil on canvas, 100 x 90 cm, signed and dated on the reverse 2002About the artist: Izvor Pende studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb from 1996 to 1998, before continuing his studies at the Düsseldorf Art Academy from 1998 to 2002. There he became a master student of Professor Rissa (Rissa, *1938, = Karin Götz, née Karin Martin, studied painting from 1959 to 1965 at the Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Art under K.O. Götz, whom she married in 1965). After graduating, Pende returned to Croatia in 2005. Since 2002, Izvor Pende has combined two classic motifs of painting in his works: women and the sea. With one exception, he treats these subjects independently of one another in his works. In this painting, however, he combines both motifs. We see a woman viewed from behind, lost in contemplation of the sea. At the heart of Pende’s artistic practice lies painting as a process of thought and insight. “Painting is a way of thinking for me; the process of constructing the painting depicts the artist’s thought process.” For him, therefore, a painting does not arise from a predetermined idea, but develops in the course of the painting process. Motifs and formal elements reappear in unfamiliar constellations and are continually reworked into new compositions.