Miroslav Krleža

writer

A one time Vice President and General Secretary of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts (JAZU), he has often been proclaimed the greatest Croatian writer of the 20th century and beyond.

Miro Gavran

writer of short stories, fiction and drama

His works have been translated into 40 languages, making him the most translated Croatian writer, and his books have come out in 200 different editions at home and abroad. His dramas and comedies have had more than 330 theatre first nights around the world and have been seen by more than two million theatre attendants.

Marko Marulić

poet and humanist

Marulić achieved a permanent status and position that has remained uncontested. His central Croatian oeuvre, the epic poem Judita s based on the Biblical tale from a Deuterocanonical Book of Judith, written in Čakavian dialect – his mother tongue and described by him as u versi haruacchi slozhena ("arranged in Croatian stanzas")

August Šenoa

novelist

In his novels, he fused national romanticism characterized by buoyant and inventive language with realistic depictions of the growth of the petite bourgeois class.

This "father of the Croatian novel" (and modern national literature) is at his best in his mass Cecildemillean scenes and poetic description of oppressed Croatian peasantry, nobility struggling against foreign rule (Venetians, Austrians/Germans and Hungarians) and romanticised period from the 15th to the 18th century. It has become a commonplace phrase that "Šenoa created the Croatian reading public", especially by writing in a popular style.

Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić

best Croatian writer for children

It was in 1913 when her book The Marvelous Adventures and Misadventures of Hlapić the Apprentice (also known as The Brave Adventures of Lapitch and Čudnovate zgode šegrta Hlapića) was published that really caught the literary public's eye. In the story, the poor apprentice Hlapić accidentally finds his master's lost daughter as his luck turns for the better.

Her book Croatian Tales of Long Ago (Priče iz davnine), published in 1916, is among the most popular today in large part because of its adaptation into a computerized interactive fiction product by Helena Bulaja in 2003/2006.[1] In the book Mažuranić created a series of new fairy-tales, but using names and motifs from the Slavic mythology of Croats. It was this that earned her comparisons to Hans Christian Andersen and Tolkien who also wrote completely new stories but based in some elements of real mythology.

Dušan Vukotić

A Croatian cartoonist, author and director of animated films.

He is the best known member of the Zagreb school of animated films. He won an Oscar for best animated short in 1961 for Surogat ("Ersatz"), being the first foreigner to do so. Another of his films, Igra ("The Game"), was nominated for an Academy Award in 1964.

Branko Lustig

A Croatian film producer

He began his film career in 1955 as an assistant director at Jadran Film, a state-owned Zagreb-based film production company.

He received his first Oscar in 1993 for the production of Schindler's List, a film based on the novel of Thomas Keneally (which is, in turn, based on the true-life story of a German manufacturer who saved hundreds of Jews during World War II). He received his second Oscar for the epic movie Gladiator about a struggle for power in Imperial Rome.

Ivan Meštrović

Sculptor, architect and writer

He was the most prominent sculptor of Croatian modern sculpture and a leading personality of artistic life in Zagreb. He studied at the Pavle Bilinić's Stone Workshop in Split and at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where he was formed under the influence of the Secession. He traveled throughout Europe and studied the works of ancient and Renaissance masters, especially Michelangelo, and French sculptors A. Rodin, A. Bourdelle and A. Maillola. 

Julije Knifer

abstract painter

The central motif of Knifer’s art is the exploration of meander, a geometric form which he had been creating since 1960 in various painting techniques such as print, oil, acrylic paint, collage and mural. An example of which is the colossal meander created by Knifer on a 20 x 30 m canvas in a quarry in Tübingen (1975).

Vlaho Bukovac

Painter

His life and work were eclectic, for the artist pursued his career in a variety of locales and his style changed greatly over the course of that career. He is probably best known for his 1887 nude Une fleur (A Flower), which he created during his French period and which received attention in various reviews and publications during his lifetime.

Vladimir Becić

Painter

Some insights on Vladimir Becić can be derived from his self-portraits, which he painted from his youngest days until just before his death. They are especially remarkable as they cover his time in Munich, then Paris and finally Osijek. Compared to the contemporary self-portraits of Joseph Racic and Miroslav Kraljevic, the Becic self-portraits are simpler, but show a full and complete expression. His early paintings, above all, show an accurate observation of form, subject and body and their spatial relationships rendered by a trained and skilful hand. The style of his later work owes something to the widespread tendency in Europe to return to nature in all things cultural and artistic after the First World War, and the influence of post-cubism - emphasizing the importance of construction. For Becić, nature was not a shelter, but an incentive, a great teacher of life, order, organization.

Photo from: ps-portal.eu

Bećarac

a humorous form of folk song

Bećarac uses a strict form of couplet in decasyllable, always sung to the same music, played by a tamburitza orchestra or just by the choir. The first verse is sung by the choir leader and forms a logical thesis; it is repeated by the choir of gathered men. The second verse is a humorous antithesis, also repeated by the choir (but often broken by laughter). Bećarci are usually performed at the peak of a party as a drinking song after the crowd is sufficiently warmed up by wine and music. A series of bećarci can last indefinitely. The lyrics are often made up at the spot or improvised, and the best ones are spread and reused for later parties.

Sinjska Alka

equestrian competition

 It commemorates a Croatian-Venetian victory over Ottomans on August 14, 1715 in which the local Christian population of around 700 Croats in cooperation with a smaller number of Venetians managed to defend Sinj against 60,000 Ottoman soldiers led by Mehmed-paša Ćelić.

Lipizzan horses

Croatian breed with historical importance

Two places in Croatia, Đakovo and Lipik, nurture Lipizzan horses to this day.