Julije Knifer

Julije Knifer^{[pronunciation?]} (23 April 1924 – 7 December 2004) was a Croatian abstract painter and a founding member of the 1960s Croatian art collective known as the Gorgona Group.

The central motif of Knifer's art is the exploration of meander, a geometric form which he had been creating since 1960 in various painting techniques such as print, oil, acrylic paint, collage and mural.^[1] An example of which is the colossal meander created by Knifer on a 20 x 30 m canvas in a quarry in Tübingen (1975).

He was also one of the founding members of the Gorgona Group, whose members from 1959 to 1966 were: Miljenko Horvat,

In 1994 he moved to Paris, where he lived until his death. His first posthumous exhibition was organized by Arnauld Pierre at the Frank Elbaz Gallery in Paris (2010). In 2002 he was the recipient of the Vladimir Nazor Life Achievement Award.^[2]

In 2016, Knifer's painting PLS 69 (1969) was sold in an auction in Vienna for €137,000, which was at the time the highest price ever paid for a work of Croatian modern art.^[3]

Further reading

• Biro, Adam & Pierre, Arnauld Knifer: Méandres (Paris, 2001).
• Maković, Zvonko Julije Knifer (Meandar & Studio Rašić, Zagreb, 2002).

Notes and references