Sailor with a pipe Print

Vasko Lipovac was born on 14 June 1931 in Kotor. After graduation, in 1950, he moved to Zagreb, where he enrolled to Study of Sculpture, Academy of Applied Arts, in class of Kosta Angeli Radovani. In his second year of study (1951/52) he switched to painting under mentorship of Željko Hegedušić. He got his degree in 1955; from 1955 to 1959 he was assistant at Master Class of prof. Krsto Hegedušić. That postgraduate study of a special kind provided the opportunity for exploration of their own artistic worlds within contemporary trends of European and world art to young and talented artists – each of them with their own artistic sensibility. In the period of such creative force, Vasko Lipovac created his own world in rich variety of geometric and anthropological humanistic reciprocity, cultivation of structural visual credibility in sculpture and painting always realizing modern expression and strong and dominant presence in contemporary Croatian visual art. "In his entire work, apart from early abstract phase, he was trying to promote modern anthropomorphic and associative sculpture and figurative painting succeeding in bringing to life characters and surroundings with recognizable Mediterranean spirit. His popularity was well-deserved among wide public and he received equally well reviews by master critics, as an artist of credible plasticity, cleanness and reduction to basics, with often wittily melancholic or ironically nostalgic tones." (Academician Tonko Maroević) In 1959, he married Milena Matas, and they had three sons. Since 1967, Vasko Lipovac had lived and worked in Split, realizing his poetic vision through many works and cycles of paintings, graphics, watercolours, sculptures and painted sculptures. "Arrival to Split in mid-sixties considerably strengthened his Mediterranean inspirations, gave wings to imagination and freedom, and opened the door to yearnings and nostalgias. Called a sculptor of merry people and painter of life joy, Vasko Lipovac is popular for a reason and irresistibly attractive to many. It is true that his models are lively and vital, that they represent athletes and sailors, beauties and ladies, that we encounter them in interesting situations and erotic postures, that they emanate charm and beauty of day-to-day living. But it does not seem to me that unconditional serenity of Lipovac's works always breaks through.