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To the Tree
Dubravka Svetličić

31/05/2025

After a long period of abstinence from painting, occasionally interrupted by short-term creative and exhibition trips, Dubravka Svetličić returned to painting intensively last year. Family and work obligations distanced her from artistic creation, something she considers an integral part of her being and what she truly carries and feels within herself. The need for artistic expression has accompanied her since childhood, and she made the final decision to return to painting at a time when she was experiencing a deep family crisis. In those difficult moments, she turned to the act of painting as her own kind of confessor who would listen to and understand her intimacy; as a true friend who would know how to embody her feelings and then convey them primarily to herself, and then to those who would know how to read what was painted. This is probably why a tree sprouted in Dubravka’s first paintings of this cycle. This tree, as a symbol of life, growth and resilience, stands alone on a hill and, bent by the wind, defies the strong blows of life and nature. As the author’s cycle progresses, it turns into an amorphous sign and gradually merges with the restless painted background, which seems to be moved by the same wind, and soon this symbolic and only figurative subject of abstract compositions will completely disappear in the swirls of expressive gradation of the painted field. It is logical that emotions, as the most powerful artistic weapon, move Dubravka’s painting cosmos, and before their encroachment there is no place for the object world, so even the initial symbolic foothold is no longer necessary.
In her works on paper, Dubravka approaches the very structure of the painted composition, which, guided by the author’s intuition, will become the creator of the elevated emotional atmosphere of her works. Dubravka laid the foundation for her specific form of expression with extremely dense, black color drawings of an anxious atmosphere enhanced by layered, quickly painted strokes. Whether she paints in monochrome, where she grades the black color with shades, or contrasts it with accents of turquoise, the author adheres to the principle of patient achromatic construction that will result in a completely saturated surface. Although they seem to be painted with an uninhibited stroke and in one breath, these drawings are the product of a careful subjective analysis of the correlation between gesture and color, which will become a recognizable characteristic of the author’s painting.
This is clearly evident in the acrylics on canvas in which an explosion of color replaces the achromatic composition and where the saturated surface is in permanent movement that will lead to a continuously pulsating activity of the painter’s tissue, which leaves the impression of a restless vibrating surface. Short and fast lines mix with long refined brush strokes, and color is a faithful companion of the gestural process. The author has managed to achieve an optimal balance in the prominent dynamics of her compositions, because the color scheme mostly follows the rhythm of the brush so that the faster painted parts have an appropriate accompaniment of intense colors, while the sections made with long and light strokes are dominated by an almost azure chromaticism. Working with a skillfully balanced, but still contrastingly imposed color scheme, Dubravka will most often use blue and yellow, and especially red, as significant pictorial accents, which will in themselves, but also with their carefully selected execution, move and accentuate the light that will momentarily stop the continuous movement of the entire composition, giving it a momentary calm. The black color, predominant in the previously mentioned drawings, now appears as a kind of calligraphic sign that restarts the composition briefly stopped by light. Color, as an accelerator of movement and a substitute for Dubravka’s energy, is the basic subject of this cycle, which is characterized by a complex and layered process of creating a painting. Everything is in the function of a spontaneous but still conceived and sketchily planned whole, whose segments are most often separated by different treatments of the painted surfaces; from the prevailing expressionistically painted episodes where the uninhibited ductus dominates in the color-saturated field, to almost monochrome creative pauses that simultaneously start and stop the restless composition.
In this cycle, Dubravka writes her specific authorial handwriting, woven from a quick and suggestive stroke that can be seen as a sign, a sentence and a protest, but cannot be read separately but as a unique product of an intuitively created whole.
Dubravka Svetličić’s painting is free from any narrative and literary templates, because it is a process of subjective research of abstract provenance guided by the author’s sensitive spirit. Without shying away from faith in her own mental strength, but also surrendering to emotions and spontaneity, Dubravka created paintings that exude a specific abstract intimism and round out a truly artistic worldview of refined artistic level and genuine sincerity.

She completed her primary and secondary school education in Rovinj. She graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy in Rijeka with a degree in Art History and Fine Arts – Painting in the class of Prof. Anton Depope and Prof. Ksenija Mogin.

For over 10 years, she taught fine arts at the Zvane Črnje Gymnasium in Rovinj, where she led creative workshops: painting, sculpture, drawing and graphics. She was a mentor for creative workshops for the gifted at the Novigrad Spring on several occasions.

From 1996 to 2005, she led a private foreign language school in Rovinj, which also included creative workshops. From 2006 to 2011, she was the head of the Multimedia Center of the City of Rovinj, for which she designed and led numerous cultural programs, including “Artexchange” – the first Istrian art fair, “Rovinj Spring Jazz”, and numerous solo and group exhibitions of prominent artists from Croatia and neighboring countries.

So far, she has exhibited at group exhibitions: Rovinj Art Colony, Grisia, Pazin Youth Festival, Ex-tempore Piran, Opatija and Grožnjan, annual exhibitions of the Croatian Association of Croatian Artists, and has exhibited independently in Varaždin, Pula and Sv. Juraj (Grožnjan).

Since 2011, she has been the director of the Open University of the City of Rovinj-Rovigno.

She is a member of the Croatian Association of Croatian Artists of Istria and the mother of two sons, Jan (39) and Klasa (29).