The ballads of Petrica Kerempuh

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Review by Stanko Spoljaric, art critic:

An ingenious piece by Miroslav Krleza , the "Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh " intrigued many artists, and a large number of them have interpreted them under their poetics. The theatre performances (especially by the great Ljudevit Galica on the plays in the HNK Zagreb in the seventies), sculptor pieces (by Vanja Radaus in Zagreb, Opatovina) or by paintings by Zdenko Balabanic or Ivan Lovrencic . The mentioned artistic approaches carried a part of literacy with a lot of detail, especially in Lovrencic's work created by a virtuose drawing.

Stjepan Djukic Pista approached the "Ballads" in the original way. Being acquainted with Krleza's poetry, he didn't describe the situations and states, rather, he displayed the spirit and strength of the writers piece through an impressive act by the actor Adam Koncic . Observing the expressive actor's performance, his experience of certain parts of the "Ballads", he painted the layerness of the text over the character of the artist, face and body, position and gesture, just slightly accenting the precise portrait lines. The portraits aren't descriptive but are exceptionally persuasive, with a hint of the necessary realism. Djukic insists on the atmosphere, to recognize the content, on the relations of the meditative parties and those brought on the verge of screaming. The achieved charge by light accents, scene crashes and introducing iconographic fragments and the national symbols.

The expressionistic movement of the figure, the harmony and clash towards the stylization of space are elements of the image though out in the form of a polyptych. the self-sufficiency of each piece, but also the direction one towards the other. Similar to the sequence of the "Stations of the Cross ", in the "Ballads" we can feel Djukic's journey towards the climax, the concise in regard to the face, extended hands, realistic and imaginary light. In a relatively simple scenography Koncic enrichened the space with this interpretative concept, creating the conditions for the painting excitement, for Djukic's compliance with the template and its metamorphosis. The emotional vehemence follows each frame because the actor's strength enters into every corner of the space. Djukic supports such temperature of the creative, and visually physical and vibrant surfaces in the ambient. The actor as the link between the text and the painted canvas is of the extraordinary dimensional value, in the variety of vistas (the entire character and the spent shortenings) and suggesting the hear, the path of silence and full sound.

Without doubt, this is a respectable achievement, the artistic experience with a strong personal stamp with greatly mastered metier tasks, a weft of true artistic inspiration, and Djukic's maturity confirmed in the work over the past years.