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 depersonalization, Lili self critically and dedicatedly works on the research and perfection of the painting techniques from water-color to oil on canvas. The cadre of her painting is saturated and one can feel the dynamic coloristic 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 connoisseur 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 coloristic cheerfulness and joy of colors 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 ofMaster 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 colorful 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 metaphorical... The artist achieves interesting contrasts through coloristic relations, impastos are often dynamic and result in a fierce expressiveness which, although within the recognizable figuration, shows an inner turmoil and exploration directing the artist tothe poetic realism and the sublimation of former experiences with an optic dimension of perception. In contrast to this, the ethereal water-color 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 color and light.
With these souvenirs Lili Gluić distinguishes herself as a painter who feels the spirit of the town, its unique atmosphere, coloristic serenity that seems as if singing in the subtle orchestration of colors and calm compositional relations, interweaving the realistic and the allusive, with ever clearer signs of lyric abstraction...
Tonći Šitin
English (UK) 
Hrvatski