Bruno Zupan

Zupan was born in Slovenia in 1939.  Following formal studies in Zagreb, Croatia, he immigrated to Paris in 1962, and later to the U.S. in 1964.

He has been honored with over one hundred fifty one-man shows in museums and galleries in the United States, Europe and Japan.   In 1976 he was awarded life membership in the Society of French Artists, and in 1981 and 1991, received special commissions to create First Day Covers for the World Federation of United Nations Associations Philatelic Program.  The Columbus Museum of Art curated his first retrospective exhibition to coincide with his sixtieth birthday and the new millennium in February, 2000.  To accompany this event two books were published.  Bruno Zupan, One Artist presents a large selection of his contemporary work in oil and watercolor and at the same time describes his unique lifestyle and painting technique.  Bruno Zupan, Graphic Work is a complete catalogue of his serigraphs and lithographs.

Zupan prefers to paint en plein air rather than in his studio, and his locations of choice are Mallorca, Venice and Paris.  He must have a deep emotional relationship with the subject he chooses to paint, and that intimacy allows him the freedom of expression best described by reviewer Ed McCormack after visiting his one man show in New York:

“The real image is in the paint surface itself, with its energetic bravura strokes, splashes, splatters and drips forming a unified statement, as active, alive, and visually autonomous as an Abstract Expressionist work by de Kooning or Diebenkorn – yet simultaneously evoking the world outside the canvas.  Among contemporary painters, Bruno Zupan alone possesses the singular sensibility to strike such a perfect balance between surface and subject, between a convincing pictorial lyricism and the matter-of-fact materiality that is the even larger truth and triumph of the mist advanced modern art.”