CRITICS  

Stanko Špoljarić  /  Branka Arh  /  Mladen Mitar

The painter's story by Vlasta balances between lyric intimacy and decorative stylization. Tree crown shaped world, combining leaves, birds, trees, like luxurious corsage, everything is shiny, joyful, ductile in the vibrant moment, everything is growing, expanding, pulsing in the shades of the color, in a colorful excitement. The imaginary becomes the scale of her world. She combines, shapes, matches and draws until she achieves the wanted effect, until she finally creates her own ranking of artistic values: space that can be measured by the criteria of the soul, the one that can host the objects from fantasy and dream, the one that can explore the possibilities, spell the relationships, proportions and sizes, where the reality remains just a starting point of the dreamed and sensed world, the being of the unreality. Attracts attention with the transformation of proposed motives. Uses fluid materials and linear interpretation of specific observation. The colors spread and get absorbed on the soft, sleek ground made of silk which is cut into pieces and attached on the hand made paper with rougher surface texture. In the new situation of flat relations communication with the base is wanted, the space which cannot be framed into the net of the perspective, has been layered. Strict lines as an integral part of the painting, like a border of stain glass window twists the stylistic formed lines of the plants, outlines the space borders, collect, aligns, and fastens to the base and keeps it all together, points out the separate chapters and exclusive details, limits the growth and expansion, puts in order, takes and transforms the segments of one endless painting which follows enthusiasm, joy and honesty of creating. With black or gold lines she outlines the space, describes the form, fills up the composition on the whole surface of the painting. In that mutual speech and tense intercourse of lines and color, in the rhythmical opening and closing the space, in the controlled and a bit stiffed motion of these form factors shows the meaning and the sense of such artistic attitude and system.
Flat shapes of the painted silk (consisting part of collages), which are divided into stylistic organized groups shape an unit according to the autonomic painting settings od adding, overflowing, summarizing and multiplying. The part carries the whole unit, lives with each of his elemental parts. Somewhere something disappears, so that it could appear again in the new level of observation. At that moment it gains a new dimension on the level of personal poetry in form of an ornament and decoration. The Vlasta’s actuating power lies in the idea. In the unit of collage compositions she enhances her own interpretational style, in the unconventional and casual way, the one that allows sincerity in form and in color, the freedom, and the one that conducts the painting control and discipline.

Branka Arh, historian of arts,

review of the collage exhibition
Gallery «Juraj Klović» Rijeka, 2001.