Critiques

The paintings of Lili Gluić seem to have a hidden internal life forming the base that feeds her art. Possibly, in the course of the creative process, each painting transmits the author’s (hidden) messages reinforcing, thus, the art of painting as a medium that transmits the messages most safely.

The visual-art score gets wider, staying, however, tied to the everyday life of the people by the sea, domestic animals, fish and birds, still life, views... to the motifs that bind together more meanings, from magic and dream, childhood, to the fear of solitude and loneliness... Simultaneously with the query of how the outer faċade of time influences the crushed life of the modern man and processes of depersonalisation, Lili selfcritically and dedicatedly works on the research and perfection of the painting techniques from water-colour to oil on canvas. The cadre of her painting is saturated and one can feel the dinamic colouristic pulsation of the pictorial epidermis. The attentive eye will not miss the fact that the artist is gradually changing, that she is following a certain internal impulse, remaining, at the same time, true to herself.

Most of the paintings exhibited here are dedicated to the views of Trogir, a town where she is not merely a guest before a motif, but rather a frequent observer and conoisseur of the spirit occupying the primeval stone monuments. Lili perceives the decorative streets of Trogir and small squares, its roofed-over stairways and faċades as a landscape that has become an inseparable part of her life so that the transposition of the perceived into another form of reality implies a new experience for the artist, time after time. The colouristic cheerfulness and joy of colours playing in the light pull us into the world of a forgotten and vanished time, into a nostalgic idyll of the past, testifying to the Romanesque and Gothic spirit that is no more. Everything that can be seen in Trogir, from the Cathedral of St. Lawrence, the Portal of Master Radovan, the Town Gate to the Fortress Kamerlengo and back to the heart of the town, is part of the world’s heritage and it all hovers between somewhere and everywhere. However, the “souvenirs” typically chosen by Lili are not historic sites, but rather a rustic idyll in the middle of the town - narrow stone streets and dilapidated faċades decorated by pelargonias and other colourful flowers in flower-pots, while people remain hidden so as not to diminish the dithyramb joy of the playful image. The view from Čiovo, however, opens the south-west area of the town to the sky and to broad vistas of the stone sequence of palaces which seem to grow out of the ethereal blue of the sea, the architecture merges with palm trees, the poetic realism disappears into surreal and abstract transformations of the spatial and the methaphorical...

The artist achieves interesting contrasts through colouristic relations, impastos are often dynamic and result in a fierce expressiveness which, although within the recognisable figuration, shows an inner turmoil and exploration directing the artist to the poetic realism and the sublimation of former experiences with an optic dimension of perception. In contrast to this, the ethereal water-colour paintings with everyday-life motifs, with their drawing and varnish impastos, represent masterly notes of special moments, fascination with the atmosphere of the South that halts the movement of people, birds or fish by colour and light. With these souvenirs Lili Gluić distinguishes herself as a painter who feels the spirit of the town, its unique atmosphere, colouristic serenity that seems as if singing in the subtle orchestration of colours and calm compositional relations, interweaving the realistic and the allusive, with ever clearer signs of lyric abstraction...

Tonći Šitin

The search for inherent wealth is embedded in imagery like color reflectors that flutter across painted surfaces, and are hidden by the journey. It is the unknown nature of life that characterises and accompanies the artistic quest of Lili Gluić.

Lili surprises us with innovative visual drawings that are more than the mundane images presented by portraying a newness through unexpected details that hint at a spiritual dimension and carefully detail observations of a known heritage.The use of acrylic on canvas, and watercolors, are a continuation of Lili’s earlier works, but with noticeably compressed patterns and an expansion of space. The accumulation of stored visual impressions offer implicit detail of landscapes, lavender fields, olive trees, old stone houses, fishing boats with white sails, and expressive fish referring to a forgotten world, returning us to the ancient regions of consciousness - images that have their own inner life and abundant energy. With some exaggeration one might say that Lili responds to the external phenomenon of time that dehumanizes the life, seeking to reinstate the intimate world through imagination and serving the poetic vision. Watercolor is the ideal medium in which Lili achieves stunning results through chromatic balance - the sea reflects sky and clouds in rapid change yet maintains quiet harmony and a lyrical quality.

In conclusion, Lili Gluić continues her journey, regardless of trends and time, maintaining tradition filtered through modernism. Each work tells a story linked to her experiences and knowledge. The paintings are imbued with the scent of the south, bearing the imprint of optimism, a sense of ease, and the wonderment and spirit of an artist who has a great deal more to say.

Tony Sitin; Translated by Giordana Hrga, prof.

For years, the painter Lili Gluić has been inviting us to socialise in the atmosphere of tradition. To mark her 47th solo exhibition, in addition to a range of motifs evoking the Dalmatia we wish to keep forever, Lili also presents a cycle of thematically different, yet very interesting, water-colour paintings. Although the title of the exibition, “Malo mi je jedan, jedan život s tobom” (One Life With You Is Not Enough), reveals a romantic enthusiasm about some happier festival summers, a part of the recent work has been touched by the present-day's life and the omnipresent sense of despair. Lili dedicates the exhibition to ''our'' woman, backbone of the family; by depicting her fate Lili has made her witness of time in the difficult Croatian everyday life. With translucent strokes of paint diluted with water, Lili indicates in artistic language the not really pleasant truth about ''fresh'' pensioners, aging rural households and abandonment – by family, society, friends... Transparent paint spreads are in contrast with the theme, times and feelings intertwine, everything seems both the same and different, we get confused by the author's gentle hand as well as by the careful recording of mood with the message she sends. The painter uses water to tinge and shape bent human figures. They have been instilled into a heavy white background, squeezing, devouring and subduing everything painted on it. Backruns are controlled, serving the story and the scene, giving the water-colour a narrative role. The motifs are clear, the atmosphere has been made, the message sent, which is all achieved by light and quick brush-strokes. Water-colour does not forgive mistakes.
In the second part of the exhibition Lili again proves herself as a competent painter of animals. Portrayals of animals are not frequent in modern art, it takes exceptional creative skills and good knowledge of animal anatomy to make the scene convincing,  and the movement halted on canvas in the right moment. Lili masterfully strings up heads of donkeys, goldfinches on branches, turkeys and horses, cats, small flocks of goats. She shapes the animals in proportion, with lots of love and in only several colours. She puts them in landscapes, creating brilliant artistic miniatures of a pleasant beauty and free colouristic strokes.
Lili's motifs from the treasury of architectural heritage are also reduced to the relation of colour and surface. With discontinuous brush-strokes the artist reveals the painting, choosing the recognisable and the most emotional of Dalmatia: its narrow streets, the Split port, Solurat, Riva, St. Jerome, Vela Luka. Here too, Lili leaves large spaces of white, the light is dominant, the process of dematerialisation is getting stronger, leading the artist uncontainably to the abstract parts of the composition. Still, Lili has already established her foothold in the tradition, the artistic as well as the Mediterranean, the author's expression, the colouring and motifs have long been defined in her work. Lili's water-colour paintings have been painted in the colour of emotion, the one without which the world would not exist.

Branka Brekalo, B.A.

The cycle of new acrylic paintings by Lili Gluić, created within the last two years, represents a continuation of the last two years, represents a continuation of the author´s continuous exploration of painting as an experience of visual reality, moving away from big influences and slowly confirming the pictorial path which mirrors her personality and emotional span. This relates not only to the city views but also to the specific immagination that transforms landscapes into almost subjective scenery of the soul through different tone matrices of colour which communicate in a new way…. In our opinion,until now Lili has not shown such freedom of painting, a strong vitality of the painting procedure consonant with the challenges of time, intense and pastose brushwork, reflection of light and colour, a happy rhythm of the gesture and sense of the registry of the chosen pigment. Through the application of a new building process (quick palette knife strokes), the views of the walls of Omiš and structures by the seaside exposed to the gusts of winds of jugo or bura, the chosen landscape fragments, assume a dynamic of colorist enthusiasm, freshness and freedom of contours which turns the static in reality into a whirlpool and into blows of almost moving sea ….Lili uses all painting media to depict the redness of the sky (dry brush), to parse, under the influence of the work in plein-air, the darker colours of the sea where the grey overpowers the dark blue,  the dark green suppresses the colours of summer, and a whole scale of warm ochre, golden yellow or white is interwoven into the stone of the Peristyle.

Interestingly, the painter has not changed her iconographic repertoire and building choices for many years. However, this turnaround geyser, bringing a new kind of communication with nature bearing acertain tension, seems to have been anticipated, leaving on the other side, as a kind of counterpoint, the old themes of still quiescence, forgotten addresses, domestic animals, a world about to disappear, oases of a private universe dominated by watercolour clarity, safety of haven and intuitive fixation of colour relations. What is dominant in both cases is the atmosphere, a positive, Dionysian attitude to life and art. However, moments of anxiety do notget concealed, the vulnerability of human life in the unbreakable chain of woman-city-nature-love-loneliness-soul.
So far Lili has had over 60 solo exhibitions and one could note this as being a process of a fast generation of paintings,which possibly makes it difficult to reflect deeper on various painting elements and gives the impression of incompleteness. However, we are looking at an artist with no feigned passion for work, an artist of the eye and the soul, a sincere traveller who explores without rest and observes the world recording her diarial observations, and it all seems like a personal interpretation of Lili`s intimate, yearned Ithaca. From impressionism to intimacy, from exploration to pure formal structures with balanced colours, and to the verge of abstraction. The art of Lili Gluić is a place of yearning, nostalgia, joy and a wealth of memories.

Tonći Šitin