… And the morning dawned. Dew fell,
Glistening in large drops.
The morning star shines. The wide leaves
of the jasmine tremble and quiver.
Vladimir Vidrić, Morning
Slava Raškaj, Self-portrait
Slava Raškaj (January 2, 1877 – March 29, 1906)
Anyone who mentions the biography and paintings of Slava Raškaj always adds a few lines of Vidrić’s poetry. Besides Bela Čikoš Sesija, Vidrić’s close friend and Slava’s painting teacher, as well as their shared fate in the mental institution in Stenjevec where both of them died very young, only three years apart, these two artists are connected by their extraordinary artistic sensitivity towards nature, which Slava expresses through her watercolors, and Vidrić through his poems – she depicts nature with her brush, and he does it with words.
Slava Raškaj was born deaf-mute, but she spoke through her landscapes, which brought her fame. Despite being deaf-mute and, on top of that, a woman (artists and critics of that time viewed art by women as mere entertainment), and at a very young age, her exceptional talent was recognized. After her death, special attention was drawn to her work by the painter and art critic Ljubo Babić (1890 – 1974), who was connected to Slava by their shared birthplace where they both found endless inspiration. They were both also students of Čikoš and both worked in watercolor. His reviews of her paintings are unparalleled. despite her early death.
Art critic Vladimir Lunaček writes: The unfortunate fate befell the young beginner Slava Raškaj in the art field, who showed great promise by not imitating male painters, but by expressing her artistic sensibility with true feminine instinct.
Slava Raškaj, Children in a Peasant’s Room
Slava’s Childhood
She was born into a well-off noble family in Ozalj. Unable to communicate with other children, she was very introverted and serious from an early age. In a desperate need to express herself, to speak through drawing if not with words, she would often sit alone in a corner of the room, engrossed in drawing. She also found entertainment in the garden, where as a child she started a kind of conversation with the plants, guided by her eyes, as written by the author of her monograph, Matko Peić.
Her childhood daydreaming would be interrupted at the age of eight when she was sent to the Institute for the Deaf and Mute Children for education. In Vienna (1885-1893), it is difficult to imagine how an eight-year-old child felt being torn away from their parental home, alone in a foreign country, deaf and mute, far from parents, brother Juraj, and sister Paula. Fortunately, she spends the summers absorbing the scents, colors, and landscapes of the gentle region of Ozalj, so her sketchbook is full of small studies of flowers: dandelions, frostweed, ivy, buttercups, violets, forget-me-nots, marsh marigolds…
In any case, Čikoš gave her free lessons and introduced her to painting for several years (probably 1895-1902), and Ivan Muha-Otoić arranged her studio in the mortuary of the former hospital, which was relocated to Vinogradska, because the rooms were occupied by the Institute for the Education of Hearing and Speech Impaired Children.
Slava Raškaj, Trakošćan
About Slava’s painting
Ljubo Babić: … Slava Raškaj’s talent became more evident every day. As soon as she got hold of watercolors, she quickly created beautifully crafted watercolors: scenes from Ozalj and the surrounding peasant houses. The most beautiful examples are those that depict early spring in the Ozalj landscape. Despite being painted by inexperienced hands, they are among the finest examples of this type in our country. They have refined tones and offer a sense of tranquility.
Slave Raškaj knew our art. Pure primitive vision found its realization. Among several first-class watercolors, the watercolor “Interior of a Peasant’s Room” (31 x 42) was particularly successful. It depicts two children at a simple table. The soft little heads are finely tuned, and the space is resolved with the simplest means. Everything is alive, and a special intimacy flows from it…
In the art of Croats in the 19th century,
Matko Peić: …inhaling the freshness of the damp scent from plants and spending hours gazing at water, she absorbed more and more into her sensitivity the individual elements that would later develop her into a painter with an almost mysterious sense for the original beauty of painting technique: moist, fresh, fluid. (…) A mysterious phenomenon was happening before her eyes, and with minimal painting materials, she expressed the maximum spirit of painting… she painted our landscape with the Japanese method, reductionism… The secret of her gaze lies in the fact that her eye simultaneously looked I dreamt. (…) In the frenzy of creation, the spirit overpowered the eye and imposed itself upon it. Its action was limited to selecting a few elements from the visible world, which the spirit of the painter would bring to light, revealing what had previously been hidden deep within the subconscious.
The painters of our people and landscapes – Slava Raškaj and Nikola Mašić,
Although she learned to paint academically in Čikoš’s style of art pedagogy of that time, within her, despite oils, dark colors, and large compositions on themes from Egyptian, Babylonian-Assyrian, Greek, and Christian religions, an authentic artistic expression awakens, which fortunately prevails. Memories of her childhood in Ozalj will come to the forefront. Instead of past giants, her paintings feature ordinary people from the Ozalj region: children, small cowherds, reapers, ordinary rural folk, servants…
Slava Raškaj, Boy with Scythe
Slava Raškaj, Meadow by the Forest
Slava Raškaj, Interior
Her main expressive medium y becomes and remains a watercolor. In her intimate lyrical watercolors, in which she seems to have forever wanted to capture the atmosphere of the moment, she succeeded in bringing to life everything that made up her world in a unique and fresh way: her garden, the Kupa river, the willow trees along the shore, water lilies, flowers, trees, forests… The titles of her works – “Willow Catkins and Hazel Catkins,” “Boat in the Reed,” “Swan,” “Bird on a Branch,” “Lilies,” “Reeds and Flies,” “Stylized Petals,” “Kupa near Ozalj,” “Wildflowers on the Edge of a Landslide,” “Summer Evening in Zaluka,” “Village House by the Pond,” “View from Kupa towards Sveta Gera” – speak of her delicate, romantic soul and awaken memories and a smile in the observer…
As Cikos often traveled, Slava worked more and more independently, especially outdoors: she went to Maksimir Park and other parks, as well as the Botanical Garden, where she created a marvelous cycle of Water Lilies, which are considered to be among her best works. The blue-green-purple tones of the Water Lilies reveal her exceptional talent as a painter. In 1902, Vladimir Lunacek wrote in Vienc: “Raskaj’s vo There are moments in nature that are felt and remain silent, rather than seen and observed.
Čikoš followed her work and witnessed the birth of an artist, and although they differed in terms of art, he respected her painting, so she helped him with the creation of his two paintings sent to an exhibition in Paris.
of the river, flowers, and above all, water. In her imagination, she hears it whispering…
But the loneliness that Slava deeply felt was weighing on her more and more… She would often fly, like a caged bird, into the dark corners of her consciousness, which is best described by her brother Juraj: When Slava reached adolescence, it was clear that she struggled immensely with her deaf-mute condition, and as time went on, she had moments of despair more and more frequently because of it. She withdrew into herself more and more. She lived only in her work.
On the edge In a state of mental disturbance, she increasingly sought refuge in the abandoned mills in the Kupa canyon, among ruins and precipices, which she would capture in her paintings before sinking completely.
The winter, silent landscape suited the state of her psyche best. (…) Nowhere else did Amiel have more right when he said: Landscape is the soul. (…) No matter how she painted the landscape, she painted it as herself: an old mill decaying by the Kupa river, a solitary tree in the garden, a lonely girl in the sun – all these landscapes of Slavina are self-portraits. (Matko Peić)
In 1901, the first obvious signs of illness appeared. Isolation in the garden, only socializing with the dog, her escapades through the forest ended in delirium. When the condition worsened, when she began to run away from her loved ones, she was sent to the Mental Institution in Stenjevec, where she stayed for almost four years, until her death in 1906, at the age of twenty-nine.
All the unspoken words, all the music she never heard, all the intensity of youthful passions… Slava poured memories and much more into her paintings with her brush. Despite being deeply unhappy, she left us only with beauty. Her watercolors represent the highest achievement of Croatian watercolor painting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Through them, she shows us today a beautiful, poetic, eternally young nature-like… “Look – a voice spoke to me – Sparkles of the night fly…” And I saw in the dewy bushes, Where they flash – disappear and – appear. Vladimir Vidrić, Two Landscapes.