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Klema Švarc - Požgaj
1896.
1982.
Education:
Provisional College of Arts and Crafts (Zagreb, 1916.-1918.)
Royal College of Arts and Crafts (Zagreb, 1918-1920)
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| Biography: The future best known woman caricaturist, she enrolled at the art school as a young Zagreb lady, daughter of the architect Albert Schwarz, who worked on the construction of the Croatian National Theatre. She studied with good masters and art teachers, Crnčić and Csikos, who influenced her academic career. Soon her professor became Ljubo Babić, and she was fascinated by his cynical attitude to everything that was sweet and pleasing, so Klema started drawing her school colleagues and teachers with an "addition of red hot chilli pepper". Already in her student days, in 1919, she achieved great success and renown with the exhibition of her caricatures on the bathing establishment on the River Sava, on the occasion when Francek Gospodarić snatched the hundredth poor swimmer from the whirlpools of the river and saved him from a certain death by drowning. Her professor Babić liked the exhibition so much that he suggested having the next exhibition in the "Salon Ullrich" gallery. After graduation, Klema married Mr Blivajs with whom she had children , and later married the renowned Croatian architect Zvonimir Požgaj (1906-1971). Although the broad art public remember her primarily as a brilliant caricaturist, this does not mean that – since she was a well educated painter – her opus does not contain excellent pencils and oil paintings with the motifs of still life and landscape. |
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