The Father Bernardin Sokol OFM Gallery

The art gallery “Father Bernardin Sokol OFM” was opened on the island of Badija on September 17 th , 2019. Croatian artists Emilija Karlavaris and Izvor Oreb presented the Franciscan monastery the Ascension of the Blessed Virgin Mary on Badija with a valuable artistic donation of their visual and sculptural works which make up the permanent collection of the gallery. Within the walls of the Franciscan monastery, these donated works have found the ideal spatial framework in which they attain their full meaning and with which they form a harmonious whole. All the creative and spiritual aspirations of these two hardworking and self-sacrificing artists can be found in their work. For decades they have shared a human and artistic fate while building their artistic path between the sun-drenched Mediterranean and the Croatian continent, between the everyday human experience and the religious.

Emilija Karlavaris was born December 28 th , 1952, in Rijeka. She finished the Pedagogical High School in Rijeka in 1971 and studied at the Pedagogical Academy in Rijeka. In 1977 she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb with a degree in Sculpture under Professor Valerije Michieli. She has been exhibiting her work both individually and collectively since 1976. Since her first public exhibitions, this artist has confirmed herself as a miniature master. In the medium of sculpture, she has created impressive portraits, heads and faces of famous historical figures and her contemporaries in the art world. With her skilful modelling, she is able to present, with minimal material, the endless diversity of human character and portraiture with a touch of humour, an endless love towards people, a feeling for human proportion and the individuality of each portrayed character. In addition to sculpture, Emiliija Karlavaris is an accomplished painter and created a series of fine miniatures with a religious theme, painting numerous processions, monasteries and nuns, but also expressive still lifes with an abundance of detail in miniature formats. In sculpture, the artist seeks to precisely depict physiognomies and explore ways to completely express human individuality on formats the size of a fingernail. In her painted miniatures, Emilija Karlavaris focuses on the atmosphere and distinctiveness of the ambient while her painted figures are freed of portrait features and all attention is directed towards the iconographic determinants of the portrayed characters. Emilija Karlavaris created illustrations for a Roman Missal, the first edition of which was issued in 1980.

Izvor Oreb was born November 7 th , 1946 in Vela Luka. After completing the School of Applied Arts in Split in 1966, he enrolled at the Pedagogical Academy in Zagreb where he studied Painting under Professor Mladen Veža. After graduating from the Pedagogical Academy in 1968, he studied Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and graduated in 1972 in the class of Professor Valerije Michieli. From 1973 to 1978 he participated in the master workshop of Frano Krišnić. In 1990, Izvor Oreb published a collection of poetry Lanterna na škoju from which several poems were set to music. His following collection of poetry I suza mi pade was published in 1999. In April 2009, he published a portfolio of graphic prints with Galerija Kanvas in Zagreb. He has been exhibiting his work since 1967, both in Croatia and internationally. Two of his sculptures are on display in public areas, one in the Sculpture Park in Krapina, and the second Posušje where he designed a monument to Fra Grgo Martić in 1995. During his rich artistic carrier, Izvor Oreb created numerous portraits, croquis, caricatures and grotesques following the work of Hieronymus Bosch. He has undergone various phases and personal changes in his art from abstraction to figuration and the term New Romanticism is associated with his work. He is known for painting landscapes of metaphysical atmosphere and is a unique master of tone painting in Croatian art.