The Adriatic Inspiration with Works from the Večerina Collection

“The Adriatic Inspiration” exhibition of Adriatic landscapes has opened in the “Kockica” museum. It was already during the preparation that it was perceived as one of this year’s major museum and tourist attractions on the eastern Adriatic coast. Visitors can see 134 representative works from the collection of collector Duško Večerina, including unexhibited paintings of towns and landscapes of the Croatian Adriatic. They thematically follow the entire Adriatic coastline from Rovinj to Tivat. This also means painterly views of Opatija, Lovran, Rijeka, Kraljevica, Crikvenica, Selce, Rab, Mali Lošinj and other Kvarner towns and smaller settlements. In addition to historical, social and artistic aspects, the exhibition offers interesting holdings for ethnologists and folklorists thanks to picturesque paintings of Istrian and Dalmatian commoners, in faithfully represented folk costumes from the coastal regions and the wider hinterland. Paintings of fishermen, sea captains and various civic figures, both male and female, give the exhibition liveliness and rhythm. The exhibition presents oils on canvas, watercolors, pastels, drawings and graphics covering the period from 1800 to 1940. Authors’ signatures on the works cover a whole range of artists. There are among them many Austrian, German, Italian, Hungarian, French and English names. The paintings as well as painters presented on the exhibition often have their individual, unique and separate destinies. Very little is known about many of them, however, the paintings from Večerina’s collection experienced a happy ending – identified at some distant auction, they returned home happily, in some cases even after a century-long journey around the world. They have returned to their place of origin, where they attract the greatest attention, primarily because as we admire the paintings of our landscapes we also see ourselves and our past in them.