Ivica Petras

Inspired for years by the techniques of drawing, throughout his school years Ivica assiduously pursued illustration and caricature techniques. As from secondary school, he started to publish his sketches in various Croatian journals and magazines and thus he began his career as an illustrator.

In 1997 Ivica took the decision to devote soul and body to painting and since then he devotes all his energy to the development of his pictorial production. This professional move was to push him to participate in a number of creative sojourns and enable him to cooperate with various Zagreb galleries, who supported him in his work. Then he registered at Superior Visual Arts School in Ljubljana in Slovenia with the aim of increasing his knowledge and perfecting his technique. Ivica graduated from the painting faculty – his speciality was Impressionism – in 2014, and two years later he became a member of the Croatian Association of Fine Arts.

The artist’s approach is totally devoted to spontaneous experimentation in colours. Comparing his activity with that of a director, Ivica pictures his canvas as a scene, where every shade is expressed just like an actor who follows the role he has been assigned, but always at the whim of free gestures, to arrive at the execution of a work that is harmonious, balanced and sensitive. In this way, the painter uses oil paints and sometimes oil pastels to give himself pleasure in recreating a different look or communicating a particular emotion to the landscapes and natural features surrounding us.