KvART Gallery: Retrospective 1991-2021 exhibition by renowned Croatian artist Alfred Krupa

The largest mall in the European Union, the West Gate Shopping City in Zagreb, Croatia, is organizing a retrospective exhibition of the pioneer of the New Ink Art movement in the West.

West Gate SC engaged itself in the gallerist activity this spring and opened its own Art Gallery KvART (“Corner” in translation) in April. After the solo show of the graphic folders of famed Ivan Kožarić (1921-2020) West Gate host another important exhibition creating the cornerstone of the new Art Gallery KvART. “Retrospective 1991-2021” by Alfred Krupa is a new artistic treat for all visitors during August. The exhibition will be open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and the entrance to the exhibition is free of charge.

The exhibition “Retrospective 1991-2021” includes selected artwork by Alfred Krupa from 1991 to the present. The presented work follows the artist’s interest through various motifs (portrait, self-portrait, landscape), techniques (coal, oil pastel, drawing ink, Sumi-e drawing ink painting, watercolor, oil, combined techniques, collage, acrylic, monotype), formats (from intimate to very large), used painting and drawing tools and materials (swan feather, plastic pen, brush, newspaper, linen canvas, various oriental papers for Sumi-e painting, watercolor paper, cardboard, canvas, etc.).

Alfred (Freddy) Krupa was born in Karlovac in 1971. He graduated painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1995. In 1998/1999 he studied Japanese drawing ink painting at Tokyo Gakugei University as the first Croatian academic painter awarded with the Postgraduate Research Fellowship of the Government of Japan (Kenkyusei, Monbusho Scholarship).

For a more “mature” period in Krupa’s work, A. Vranković says: “His stay in Japan influenced Krupa’s reduction of form in the spirit of Zen’s succinctness, and the dramatic circumstances of life gave his artistic speech a specific, Western expressiveness, which gives Krupa’s recent works an immediate expressiveness that is usually absent either in traditional or modern drawing ink painting.”

Alfred Krupa’s work is presented in a number of significant international museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA Manhattan Artist Book Collection, USA), TATE in London (Library Special Collection, UK), the Šleski Museum in Katowice (Collection of Polish and Foreign Painting after 1945, Poland), the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb (MSU collection RARA), the National Museum of Modern Art in Zagreb (Modern Gallery) and many others.

Alfred Freddy Krupa’s paintings have been written about by the world’s leading cultural and art magazines and other media, including Arte Al Limite (2017, Santiago, Chile), Aesthetica (2019, York, UK), Widewalls (2019, London, United Kingdom), Highlark (2019, New York, USA), Hypebeast (2019, Hong Kong), Life As A Human (2019, Canada), Singulart Magazine (2019, Paris, France), ArtDaily (2019). , Monterey, Mexico), KKNews (2019, China), Art Reveal (2020, London, UK), Artist Portfolio (2020, Garden Grove, California, USA), CreativPaper (2020, Manchester, The  UK), Art Market (2020, Tel Aviv, Israel), Art News Portal (2021), Arts Council England (2021) and others.

Primary archival materials related to the history of the artist’s artistic activity are included in some of the most important archival collections including those in the document archive in Kassel (Germany), the Institute for Modern Art in Nuremberg (Germany), the German Photo Library (SLUB Dresden), the German Digital Library. Berlin) and elsewhere. The Allgemeines Kunstlerlexikon (AKL) – The General Lexicon of Artists (the most modern, most reliable, and comprehensive reference work in the world on artists) describes Krupa’s artistic reach in these words: ‘In his manifesto (New Ink Art Manifesto, 1996, publ. 2019) ink painting as an interpretation of Western modern art by means of East Asian ink technique, as a combination of contemporary painting and traditional Sino-Japanese calligraphy. In this regard, he is considered the leading representative of modern European ink paintingThe exhibition will be open until August 29, 2021.

More about Freddy Krupa here.