Straddled between government buildings and tourists attractions is the oldest gallery of Naïve Art in the world, showcasing Croatia's most original heritage paintings, hidden away in Zagreb’s upper town. The effervescent oil on glass paintings produced by leading names from the Croatian self-taught Naïve movement (as well as a few works by international artists) brighten the dark walls of the gallery, depicting fantastically bizarre rural scenes and intricately dotted cityscapes that verge on psychedelic. Unusual and brilliant, the Croatian Museum of Naïve Art is unlike anything else. This hasn't gone unnoticed by the city which plans to relocate the gallery from its eighteenth-century home to a shiny building.
Plans for the museum will be officially announced at the Mimara on Tuesday. The new site will be in Vranyczanyeva park, overlooking downtown Zagreb near the recently renovated Grič tunnel. Bizarrely, the museum itself wasn’t first consulted about the planning, nor was it financially involved, but after viewing the proposal for the new site it has enthusiastically backed the project.
Over the past decade or so the museum has broadened its collection to include other forms of so-called outsider art beyond big Croatian names like Ivan Generalić, Mirko Virius and Ivan Rabuzin, which in turn has heightened its global significance.
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