Matija Skurjeni

Matija Skurjeni (Veternica, 1898 – Zaprešić, 1990) Croatian naive painter, one of the co-founders of the Society of Croatian Naive Artists. Completed his trade as a house painter, worked as a shepherd and miner. During the First World War, he was a soldier on the Russian and Italian fronts. His first paintings were created in 1924, and in 1948 he had his first exhibition. He retired in 1956 and then devoted himself entirely to painting, and in 1957 began collaborating with the Gallery of Primitive Art in Zagreb. Skurjeni’s European success began in 1960 when he exhibited at La Nuova Pesa gallery in Rome. Two years later, he held his first solo exhibition in Paris, where he met André Breton and other surrealists. In 1984, he donated part of the paintings, drawings and graphics to the Zaprešić Municipality Assembly as the foundation of the Matija Skurjeni Gallery. The gallery was opened three years later, in 1987, in a renovated storage room for crops in Novi dvori in Zaprešić. In 2000, the gallery grew into the Matija Skurjeni Museum with a permanent exhibition that includes Skurjeni’s entire oeuvre: oil paintings on canvas, drawings and graphics.