My Palette, Courtesy the artist Rene Grgic-Dakovic

In his atelier in the attic in Martićeva Street, I ask the wise and quiet painter Oskar Herman what he thinks happens later. Darkness, darkness, he replies readily. Indeed, some of the dark colours on his paintings strike me much more than the others, as if he has finally inhabited them himself. However, I rarely see them under normal circumstances, since I don’t frequent galleries and his paintings are nowhere else to be seen. More often I encounter him when I raise my hand heavy with sleep to turn off the lights. Oh, darkness, darkness – I say then – be gentle to him, be gentle to all of us.

 

Translated from the Croatian by

Danijel Dragojević
DANIJEL DRAGOJEVIĆ (1934-2024) was born in Vela Luka on the island of Korčula, Croatia. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest Croatian poets of 20th Century. An exceptionally reflexive and innovative writer with a pronounced interest in the ontological, Dragojević successfully mixes the mundane with metaphysical. His early influences include Eugenio Montale, Henri Michaux and Gaston Bachelard. The range of his intertextual references expanded subsequently to include subjects as diverse as Presocratic philosophers, medieval Christian mysticism, John Cage and Martin Heidegger. For decades he was the editor of the highly influential feature Poetry Aloud!, broadcasted on Croatian National Radio 3rd Programme. His most famous poetry collections are Turtle and Other Landscapes (1961), In Your Real Body (1964), Storm and Other (1968), The Fourth Beast (1974), Natural History (1974), Figments (1976), The Carbon Age (1981), Observatory (1994), Walking Alongside Railway (1997), Murmur (2005) and Somewhere (2012).

Damir Šodan
DAMIR ŠODAN is a poet, playwright and translator, born in Split. He has published seven collections of poetry, three books of selected plays as well an anthology of Croatian neorealist poetry and the anthology of contemporary European poetry, Are There Any Poets in Monte Carlo (Croatian PEN, 2022).

René Grgić-Đaković
René Grgić-Đaković is a contemporary figurative painter born in 1986 in Osijek, Croatia. He earned his MA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 2011 and his MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2023, where he was awarded a full scholarship. René is now based in New York, where he works as a freelance artist. His paintings - often small in scale yet rich in detail - are meditative explorations of pose, light, and atmosphere, inviting viewers into a quiet, introspective space. Through precise brushwork and layered oil techniques, Grgić-Đaković creates works that feel timeless while engaging with contemporary themes. He has exhibited internationally, including shows in New York, Denmark, Greece, the UK, and across Croatia.