We are very proud of croatia2go.com protégé, the young Croatian sculptor Mate Turić, Mata Croata, and his participation in this year’s Paris Salon.
The name of his art is symbolic and so contemporary.
A Return to Life
The exquisite Mate Turić sculpture of a sailboat is made from a single piece of stone. Its pedestal looks ragged: sharp shards of blue glass represent danger, while the pieces of white rock represent the turbulence of a stormy sea.
As in this time of the coronavirus, the entire world has felt adversity. We are fighting and striving to get back to every day, free daily life as quickly as possible.
Sailboats represent combativeness and persistence, a symbol of hope and the aspiration to escape from these difficulties.
The glue on the stand represents the humidity of the sea, that is, the water and the sailboat’s movement. That is the part of the author’s story: when the ship sails, the sea foams.
The height of the sculpture is 104.7 cm.Width 26.3 cm.
Mata Croata
Mate Turić was born in 1987 in Zagreb and is known under his artistic name Mata CROata. He completed the Academy of Fine Art (ALU) in Široki Brijeg. He most frequently works in spatial relief, producing his signature, hand-made sculptures in his cutting style. He was the Artist on Globe Award recipient as the best young artist in Croatia in 2015.
In 2016, he won the Artist on Globe Award for the exhibition of the year in Croatia. In 2018, he won an award at the Moslavečki Štrk international exhibition of miniatures in Popovača. He also won two awards in an anonymous public competition for a monument to war veterans in Dugo Selo. He has had more than 40 independent exhibitions and has created more than 1,000 different stone sculptures, mostly sailboats.
More recently, he has introduced new motifs into his work and is now producing signature works of stone yachts.
Mata CROata is producing sculptures in spatial relief for a reason, trying to reduce a sculpture to a single point of view – because in the storminess of life people want to see things as quickly as possible. People live in apartments with not enough space for sculptures that they can walk around. His work often emphasizes a potent symbolism, trying to say a lot with a little, creating a unique and recognizable ‘logo’ today.
Famous Croatian artists in the Salon d’Automne
Throughout the history of the Salon d’Automne, a small number of Croats have exhibited. Some of them are sculptors Ivan Meštrović and Hrvoje Dumančić, painters Zvonimir Mihanović and Stjepko Mamić.
The sculptures he has created in the last six years are signature works and are linked as a whole, and can be viewed in an atelier.
