Zupan: Through My Eyes

Bruno Zupan was born in 1939 in Slovenia. Once his studies in Zagreb, Croatia were completed, he immigrated to Paris in 1962 where he enjoyed a bohemian lifestyle. He traveled to the United States in 1964 and became an American citizen in 1969. Zupan has been honored with over one hundred and fifty one-man shows in museums and galleries in the United States, Europe and Japan, and has published fifty limited edition graphic works in Paris and Mallorca. In 1976, he was awarded life membership in the Society of French Artists, and in 1981 and 1991, received special commissions to create First Day Covers for the World Federation of United Nations Associations Philatelic Program. The Columbus Museum of Art curated his first retrospective exhibition to coincide with his sixtieth birthday and the new millennium in February 2000. To accompany this event, two books were published. Bruno Zupan, One Artistpresents a large selection of his contemporary work in oil and watercolor, and at the same time, describes his unique lifestyle and painting technique. Bruno Zupan, Graphic Work is a complete catalogue of his serigraphs and lithographs.

His inspiration comes from spending his life in the pursuit of light. He prefers to paint en plein air rather than in his studio, and his locations of choice are Mallorca, Venice, and Paris. Picturesque vistas, the haphazard growth of flowers along stucco walls or well-worn footpaths, and the golden tones of sunset on Venetian architecture all owe their inspiration to Zupan’s observance of light and the recognition of the varied yet simple manifestations of its beauty. The deep emotional relationship that he has with the subjects he chooses to paint allows him a freedom of expression best described by reviewer Ed McCormack after visiting his one man show in New York: “The real magic is in the paint surface itself, with its energetic bravura strokes, splashes, splatters, and drips forming a unified statement, as active, alive, and visually autonomous as an Abstract Expressionist work by de Kooning or Diebenkorn – yet simultaneously evoking the world outside the canvas. Among contemporary painters, Bruno Zupan alone possesses the singular sensibility to strike such a perfect balance between surface and subject, between a convincing pictorial lyricism and the matter-of-fact materiality that is the even larger truth and triumph of the most advanced modern art.”