Slava Raškaj

Slava Raškaj (; 2 January 1877 – 29 March 1906) was a Croatian painter, considered to be the greatest Croatian watercolorist of the late 19th and early 20th century. Deaf since birth, Raškaj was schooled in Vienna and Zagreb, where her mentor was the renowned Croatian painter Bela Čikoš Sesija. In the 1890s her works were exhibited around Europe, including at the 1900 Expo in Paris. In her twenties Raškaj was diagnosed with acute depression and was institutionalised for the last three years of her life before dying in 1906 from tuberculosis in Zagreb. The value of her work was largely overlooked by art historians in the following decades, but in the late 1990s and early 2000s interest in her work was revived.

Biography

Slava was born as Friderika Slavomira Olga Raškaj on 2 January 1877 into a middle class family (her mother Olga ran the local post office which was at the time a prestigious administrative position) in the town of Ozalj in present-day Croatia (at the time in the Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, a subdivision within Austria-Hungary).

Raškaj's repertoire was peculiar at the time - she painted somewhat macabre paintings of still life, watercolors with unusual objects such as a starfish, a silver jewelry chest, and even more interesting, pairs of objects such as a red rose and an owl, or a lobster and a fan.

In the late 1890s she started painting en plein air, depicting outdoor scenes from the Zagreb Botanical Garden, Maksimir Park and other parks in the city, featuring somewhat lighter tones and colors. soon after it opened in 1898, where six of her watercolors were presented along with the works of renowned painters such as Menci Klement Crnčić and Vlaho Bukovac. Her paintings were also exhibited in Saint Petersburg, in Moscow and at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1900, where five of her paintings were shown. She was hospitalised but soon after that she was released for home care. However, her condition deteriorated further and Slava was eventually institutionalised at a psychiatric hospital in Stenjevec in 1902. She completely stopped painting in her last years, and died on 29 March 1906 from tuberculosis. and a grand retrospective exhibition featuring 185 of her works opened at the Klovićevi Dvori Gallery in Zagreb between May and August 2008. in their Famous Croatian Women series (Znamenite Hrvatice), along with children's writer Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić and the 17th-century noblewoman Katarina Zrinska.

The Slava Raškaj Educational Centre, in Zagreb, specializes in inclusive practical and vocational education for deaf students and those with communication impairments.

Selected works “Stablo u snijegu” (Tree in the snow) “Rano proljeće” (Early spring) “Proljeće u Ozlju” (Spring in Ozalj) “Zimski pejsaž” (Winter landscape) “Lopoči” (Water lilies)

Gallery