For years, the painter Lili Gluić has been inviting us to socialize 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-color paintings. Although the title of the exhibition, “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-color 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-color 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 colors. She puts them in landscapes, creating brilliant artistic miniatures of a pleasant beauty and free coloristic strokes.
Lili's motifs from the treasury of architectural heritage are also reduced to the relation of color and surface. With discontinuous brush-strokes the artist reveals the painting, choosing the recognizable 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 dematerialization 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 theMediterranean, the author's expression, the coloring and motifs have long been defined in her work. Lili's water-color paintings have been painted in the color of emotion, the one without which the world would not exist.
Branka Brekalo, prof.
English (UK) 
Hrvatski