Anton Cetín (b. 1936)

Painter and printmaker Anton Cetín studied art in Zagreb before moving to Paris in 1966, where he worked as an illustrator. In 1968, he immigrated to Canada, working in advertising design for a time to help his art career. Cetín’s work has been preoccupied with images of Eve in the Garden of Eden, culminating in several one-man shows throughout the 1970s, and continuing on into the 1990s, although he did find interest in depicting the Canadian landscape alone in the 1980s. The preoccupation with the figure of Eve is also with woman in general. As Stuart Reid interprets this work, "Eve is our guide who leads us to the realm of the infinite. The archetypal woman, Eve universally represents the feminine, the spirit of peace and harmony, the giver of life and nurturing force" (1996). Cetín’s work is highly graphic in nature, based on line and the use of forms that float on lushly painted backgrounds suggestive of landscape. A juxtaposition of flowing line and geometric form often adds tension to his works already vibrating with colour. In 1998, thirty years after the artist first began drawing on this theme, he held an exhibition entitled Eve and the Bird: Variations, indicating he had not yet exhausted this inspirational source. Milan Ivaniševic has discussed the series in terms of colour, noting that "when Anton Cetín left his native Bojana, he took with him all the colours in the name of his town and brought them to places where he rested. In all those places the colours were beautiful, but not as beautiful as Bojana . . ." (1998). In a sense, Cetín carried his own Paradise with him wherever he immigrated, sharing it through his artwork. The introduction of the bird into the Eve paintings provides an ambiguous symbol, as the bird represents both the fragility of nature, and the power of nature in its ability to fly. According to Cetín (1996), he uses the bird to show that humanity must live in harmony with nature, as Eve lives in harmony with the bird. In 1986 Cetín returned to Zagreb for his first major exhibition there. Since then he has frequently visited Croatia, Germany, and Austria. Cetín has received several awards and honours, including Artist of the Year from the Canadian Croatian Artists Society in 1986, and the Order of Croatian Danica and the Order of the Croatian Wattle from the President of Croatia in 1995. He is a member of Visual Arts Ontario, the Print Council of Australia, the World Print Council and UNESCO. Source