The Museum of Contemporary Art is a partner in the project.
Students from the “4. Gimnazija” high school in Zagreb welcomed their peers from the “Janson de Sailly” high school from Paris. During the one week programme, in cooperation with the Museum of Contemporary Art (MSU), they launched the project “Zagreb and Paris talk through art: Exat 51 and New Tendencies”, reports Večernji List on October 22, 2018.
The students from Zagreb and Paris walked around the city, visited the museums and attended workshops at the MSU, where they were introduced to different artistic techniques. An exhibition of joint works is being prepared, which will be later be presented in the French capital as well.
“Since this is the second year of our student exchange, we have prepared well for the event. One of the questions at French school exams deals with artists from the 1950s and 1960s, many of whom worked in Zagreb, so it was easy for us to agree on the topic,” said the visual arts teacher Petra Sukrov Ćurcija.
The students from Zagreb attend a bilingual programme in which art and history are taught in French. Thus, while learning about the Exat 51 group and artists like Bernardo Bernardi, Božidar Rašica, Ivan Picelj, Aleksandar Srnec and others, they also perfected their French, while French students got acquainted with the Croatian capital. “I have not been here before, but I am thrilled since everything is so artistic. There are many museums, all of them very interesting, and even the ordinary buildings in the city centre look like art”, says the 15-year-old Elisa Lin from Paris.
Croatian students were delighted to play the role of the hosts. “It is nice to show the town to our friends, and during these walks even we can see many things we did not even know were so valuable. One of them is certainly the State Archives building,” says student Rea Lacić.
One of the goals of the project, according to professor Spomenka Šabić, is to make students aware that they are the citizens of Europe, that their history and art have left a very important imprint on the entire European culture. After completing the Zagreb part of the programme, the students will maintain contact through social networks, while next year the students from Zagreb will travel to Paris, where they will continue to explore the arts of the 1950s and 1960s.
“We will do our best to present our heritage as best as we can, and next year we will be introduced to the French art. Friendships which are created through art are the most important result of the entire project,” says Sukrov Ćurćija.
Translated from Večernji List (reported by Jelena Ružić).
