TONI FRANOVIC IN NEW YORK CITY

Horses

Friday, March 19, 2004
Dear Friends

Just a little note to inform you that my good friend
TONI FRANOVIC is exhibiting his works at the

New Century Artists Gallery
530 West 26th Street (bet. 10th and 11th Aves.)

Starting March 15th to March 27th, 2004
Hours: 11:00 am to 6:00pm

You are invited to join us at the
Celebratory Reception
On
Saturday, March 27th, 2004
3:00 – 6:00pm

RSVP: WandaSRadetti@aol.com
Toni’s Cellular: 1 469 348-3525

Here is Toni’s web site:
Toni Franovic's Home Page

Notes on Toni Franovic

From: TONI FRANOVIC “Go West Young Man!!”
Oils on canvas 2003
The Gallery at Phoenix Art and Supplies
Dallas, Texas – December 6- 23, 2003
Toni Franovic
In an earlier foreword, I have already attempted to identify the painter Toni Franovic through elements of artistic form, in the sense of observing how his controlled application of selected coloristic daubs is perhaps best suited to his acute observational sensibility. It was said then that "with the masterful rapid strokes that dominate his painting (...) Franovic readily reacts with his random jottings in an attempt to preserve forever the excitement that has spurred him to the artistic discipline of his own creative energy." However, can the same line of thinking be applied to the pictures from his latest cycle? I believe that I can, indeed --the expression of the color and speed of painting now come to the fore to an even greater extent. His paintings continue to be constructed with powerful, expressive deposits of color but the previous diffusion of the artistic stroke has been replaced by a fine, nearly arabesque exuberance and the confidence of an excellent painter's hand. Scattered tachist splatters are now completed with "enformel" dripping, which sometimes runs down a painting and produces a feeling as if we are looking through a window bathed in rain. On the observational plan, this would signify that the individual and particular are replaced by an interpretation of the invisible and unfathomable, and the field of painting activity has been transformed into a metalinguistic projection of genuine plausibility. In this inter- twining of the material and fluid, the logical and intuitive, multiple levels are achieved that transparently add conviction and authenticity to the exclusively spiritual and imaginative existence of these works. From the other side, these paintings are ostensibly landscape oriented and I have also already written on an earlier occasion how it is entirely certain that Franovic's creative reflections of ambiance have their origins in a specific and actual clime. They all radiate the recognizable toponymic identities of the artist's haunts (Legrad, Vinodolska Valley and, certainly, the garden of his family home in Zagreb), which consequently influence the very precise determination of Franovic' s motif. Franovic's motif is purposeful and unfaltering. It is called by its place of origin. The elements of the form of his painting are therefore easily legible artistic units, because each detail follows the constructional logic of a warm view of our local clime, except when we find ourselves before Franovic's motifs from Israel, that always seem sunnier, airier, warmer and lighter. It is highly evident that the painting of Toni Franovic originates on the illustrative basis of reality. However much at certain moments t seems to be symbolic and out of the character of actual physical spatial existence, it is first of all painting that expertly perceives and then defines the totality of a place from the existential essentials that are crucial in the process of the formation of Franovic' s creative individuality. However, this artist does not start from a simple mimetic projection of an ambience in which he moves and with which he becomes intimate, but first of all internalizes a space mentally. Therefore, the work of Toni Franovic does not compete with nature. The painter and his work exist in a space liberated from mimetic relations with nature to such m extent that sometimes in his most recent works a motif based upon reality is transformed into an abstract vista. The motif becomes nearly unrecognizable, educed to the level of a symbol (particularly in a minimalistic composition of the setting sun), so that the semeiological interpretation competes with perception. Moreover, that which we truly see is the painter's subjective and creative reflections on the totality of a place from his own experience, movement, sojourn and relief. Thereby, artistically Franovic's work, strictly speaking, becomes a mental construction not only of that which exists but of thoughts. This work relies on the personal and intimate, is less conversant with the external, and more with the world of the artist's inner freedom.
Goran Blagus


From: Mark Talisman
Imagining and realizing a modern setting to pray
Creating New Judaica: Toni Franovic is pushing the envelope

New Judaica
Toni Franovic is pushing the envelope

Franovic personifies the very person who, as artist, is so hard to find in this complicated early 21st Century because so much art work is not original, does not push the to imagine what may lay ahead in this rarified field all the while worrying about dreams and ideas can be realized here on earth.
Franovic's ideas come fast and furiously, He can commit them to paper, sometimes backs of envelopes, other times wildly waving the emptiness of the air in from of him. Other times producing finished product before even introducing the concepts in raw form. As a result of such alternative methods of showing his thoughts and dreams, too many drop out unable to follow this artistic pan. I hear his whistle; it beguiles me, yet his sleight of hand and his peripatetic nature are just too fast to follow. Until, of course, this maddeningly talented artist produces the most imaginative crystal goblet, hand etched, frosted here and there, and the viewer, now the startled bystander, is handed a most original and breath taking religious chalice ready to be integrated in a kiddush, a he wine, as if it had always been there ready to use.
Happily, Franovic is busy at work creating a whole series of pieces of newly devised j pieces of Judaica to be used easily in the Jewish Life Cycle, filling vacuums in some instances which have existed and enhancing others vastly. A cut crystal Seder a series of Kiddush cups utilizing materials in creative ways not heretofore possible or probable. Mazzuzot in brass, bronze, glazed clays of all types, and hand woven into which have been woven real gold thread, not done since the 15th or 16th centuries. But Toni researched, found the maker of the gold thread as it was made long ago, found living still a weaver who has carried forward from centuries past, an ability to Did thread directly in the linen.
Franovic has also found the people who still know how to make hand made cut velvet; otherwise a long lost art form. He has found and nurtured the artisans who can make new sequined rare fabrics which otherwise are only available to view in museums of culture and anthropology.
He has also searched the depths and breadth of these museums to find costume fabric long unavailable, which he now is able to reproduce, to use in new forms of religious ceremony as if they never disappeared.
The significant number of artisans and artists Toni has found and befriended have stood and appreciated greatly his willingness to work with them and to help r and then to flourish. Their rare art forms would surely have long ago disappeared except for the Franovic interventions in which he has served as a one-man endangered species brigade.

Happily Project Judaica Foundation has selected the works of Judaica to be exhibited and sold in its major Judaica website where young artists are asked by juried exhibitions works. www.judaica.org
Project Judaica Foundation's mandate is to:
Rehabilitate, exhibit and disseminate all forms of Judaic culture.


Mark E. Talisman President,
Project Judaica Foundation, Inc.
Founding Vice Chairman,
U. S. Holocaust Museum and Memorial Washington, D. C

Formatted for CROWN by Nenad Bach