Fierce Women: Predavanje Leonide Kovač o Nasti Rojc

Nasta Rojc jedna je od najvažnijih hrvatskih slikarica, a njezin se opus primarno sastoji od portreta, autoportreta i pejzaža. Porijeklom iz dobrostojeće obitelji, nakon iscrpljujućih pregovora s ocem započinje slikarsko obrazovanje u privatnoj školi Otona Ivekovića gdje upoznaje bliskog prijatelja i slikara Branka Šenou – s kojim će desetak godina poslije, također zbog nagodbe s ocem, sklopiti formalni brak. Studij slikarstva nastavila je u Beču na Kunstschule für Frauen und Mädchen, te potom u Muenchenu gdje u Heimannovoj školi studira s Miroslavom Kraljevićem. Imala je brojne samostalne i grupne izložbe u Hrvatskoj i inozemstvu od kojih je posebno uspješna bila ona u Londonu 1925. Osnivačica je Kluba likovnih umjetnica u Zagrebu, 1927.

Život i djelo Naste Rojc od velikog su značaja i za hrvatsku queer povijest. Po završetku Prvog svjetskog rata upoznaje svoju životnu partnericu Alexandrinu Onslow, članicu ‘Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Services’, te poznatu britansku sufražetkinju Veru Holme, s kojima 1925. i 1926. boravi u Engleskoj i Škotskoj. Po povratku u Hrvatsku dvije iznimne žene, Nasta Rojc i Alexandrina Onslow, među prvima otvoreno žive u istospolnoj izvanbračnoj zajednici u Zagrebu. Zbog pomaganja NOB-u obje, već u godinama i bolesne, završavaju u ustaškom zatvoru 1943. Oduzetu imovinu ni nakon Drugog svjetskog rata nisu u potpunosti dobile natrag pa Nasta Rojc u siromaštvu umire na svoj rođendan 1964., petnaest godina nakon Onslow, pored koje je pokopana na zagrebačkom Mirogoju. Sve navedeno svjedoči o Rojc kao umjetnici i strašnoj ženi čiji je turbulentni život daleko nadilazio zadane vremenske okvire, obilježen pomicanjem granica tadašnjih ustaljenih normi i građanskih pravila na svim područjima.

Leonida Kovač je povjesničarka i teoretičarka umjetnosti, kustosica, te profesorica na Akademiji likovnih umjetnosti Sveučilišta u Zagrebu. Od sredine 1980-ih intenzivno se bavi feminističkom dekonstrukcijom heteronormativnih diskursa, s fokusom na režime reprezentacije, odnosno strukturalno nasilje u diskursu (o) umjetnosti i u vizualnoj kulturi. Koncipirala je i realizirala tridesetak autorskih izložbi, među kojima su osobito važne izložbe Nan Hoover, Dube Sambolec, Katarzyne Kozyra, Orshi Drozdik, Dorothy Cross, Rite Duffy, Naste Rojc i Edite Schubert.  Bila je povjerenica i kustosica hrvatskog paviljona na Bijenalu suvremene umjetnosti u São Paulu (2002.) i na Bijenalu u Veneciji (2003.) gdje je izložbom ‘Uzorci vidljivosti’ predstavila serije autoportreta Ane Opalić. Od 2002. – 2005. bila je izabrana potpredsjednica Međunarodne udruge kritičara umjetnosti – AICA.

Srijeda, 06.11.2019. YIHR.hub (Đorđićeva 8a/II, Zagreb) 18:00

 

https://voxfeminae.net/festival/unseen/fierce-women-predavanje-leonide-kovac-o-nasti-rojc/

 

Wednesday, November 6th, 6:00PM

Fierce Women: Leonida Kovač speaks about Nasta Rojc | lecture

Nasta Rojc is one of the most important female Croatian painters, whose oeuvre is primarily composed of portraits, self-portraits and landscapes. Rojc comes from a prosperous background, but she had to persevere in spite of her father in order to start her education as a painter at Oton Iveković’s private school. There she befriended another painter, Branko Šenoa, with whom she would, due to an agreement with her father, conduct a formal marriage a decade later. She continued her studies as a painter, first at Vienna’s Kunstschulefür Frauen und Mädchen and later in Munich where she attended Heimann’s school together with Miroslav Kraljević. She set up numerous solo and group exhibitions in Croatia and abroad, with the 1925 exhibition in London being a notable success. She also founded the all-female Artist club in 1927. in Zagreb.

The life and work of Nasta Rojc is also of great importance for Croatian queer history. After World War I, Rojc met her partner Alexandrina Onslow, a member of Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Services, as well as the famous British suffragette Vera Holme, two women with whom she stayed in Scotland and England over the course of 1925 and 1926. Upon her return to Croatia, Rojc and Onslow, two exceptional women, were among the first to live openly in a same-sex partnership in Zagreb. Because of their contribution to the National Liberation Movement, both of them were imprisoned in 1943. The assets that had been taken from them were not restored even after the end of World War II, so Nasta Rojc died in poverty on her birthday in 1964, fifteen years after Onslow, next to whom she was buried at the Mirogoj cemetery in Zagreb. All of this is a testament to Rojc as an artist and a fierce woman whose turbulent life was well beyond the idea of a woman’s life at the time, marked by pushing the envelope, subverting norms and expectations in all segments of her life.

Leonida Kovač is an art historian and theorist, a curator and an associate professor at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts. Since the mid-1980s she has been intensely devoted to the feminist deconstruction of heteronormative discourses with a focus on representation regimes, more specifically, the structural violence in the discourse of (and about) art and visual culture. She has created and displayed about thirty exhibitions, with notable highlights being exhibitions on Nan Hoover, Duba Sambolec, Katarzyna Kozyra, Orshi Drozdik, Dorothy Cross, Rita Duffy, Nasta Rojc and Edita Schubert. She was a confidante and curator of the Croatian pavilion at the Sao Paolo Biennale (2002) and the Venice Biennale (2003), where she presented a series of self-portraits by Ana Opalić in the exhibition ‘The Cause of Visibility’. Kovač was elected vice-president of the International Association of Art Critics from 2002 to 2005.