Zoran Mušič(Bukovica near Gorizia, 1909 – Venice, 2005)
In the Studio (Double Portrait)
1990, graphite, chalk, paper, 310 x 374 mm
Dated lower left: 28-II-90, Signed lower right: Music
ZD 2016029, The Ljuban, Milada and Vanda Mušič Collection
A double portrait, a portrayal of two painters in their studio: Mušič’s wife Ida is on the left, sporting her trademark red hairdo and surrounded by a dark sheen, accompanied by an outline of the artist’s self-portrait on the right, his hands accentuated as they clutch his sketchbook. She is posing, he is painting her. The depictions are simple and we only have a hint of their bodies, with just their faces and hands drawn in any detail.
Mušič sketched the image on paper using a graphite pencil, then blending with red and black chalk. The sketch is dated to 28 February 1990.
The pictures from this cycle make up some of the greatest artistic achievements of Mušič’s later years. He often repeated how he painted only that which he intimately knew: himself and his life partner Ida. Their time together received its epilog in the Double Portraits, which rounded off six decades of shared lives between two partners, two painters, who subordinated everything to their creative processes.
They were fiercely independent, stubborn, and egotistical people who didn’t even share a studio, yet they find themselves in a double portrait in Zoran’s studio, a memento that will outlive the couple’s earthly existence.