Self-taught artist
About the founder of contemporary naive art...
Born on December 21, 1914, Ivan Generalić grew up in the Podravina village of Hlebina, in the oldest house in that settlement.
Ivan, as a boy, always helped with household chores. His family was very poor. Being a great painter, he looked after the cows and pigs diligently and was a very obedient child who understood even then what position the family was in.
Nevertheless, when he wasn't rolling up his sleeves and running to help his mother and father, little Ivan often painted. He would paint with black coal or a stick in the sand, and sometimes, if there was any, even with a regular black pencil.
At first, he drew what surrounded him - landscapes, animals, and one day he came up with his little invention.
Namely, Ivan took multicolored papers from which women used to make flowers at the time, and by soaking the papers in water, he got watercolors!
A few years after that, Krsto Hegedušić advised him with a motif from his village. And so the art of the great Ivan Generalić began to flourish...
