Peter Freeman, Inc. is pleased to present Julije Knifer’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, taking place in the 100th year of the anniversary of his birth and 20 years since his passing.

Chronology and order are irrelevant in my work. I have probably already created my last paintings, but maybe not yet the first ones.

(Julije Knifer, Notes, 1977)

Widely considered one of the most important and influential Croatian painters of the 20th century, Julije Knifer helped found the neo-avant-garde Gorgona group, an influential Zagreb-based collective active from 1959 to 1966 whose main ambition was the search for artistic and intellectual freedom. He dedicated the majority of his artistic career, from 1959 until his death in 2004, to the exploration of a geometric and rhythmic form known as the meander in pursuit of an “anti-image” that eschewed all expressive content. Appropriating this historic motif transformed Knifer’s approach to art into an ascetic exercise of endless variation and reiteration in which time and evolution becomes relative, a journey he described as “without progression or regression”.

This retrospective exhibition includes paintings and drawings from 1950 to the early 2000s, examining Knifer’s strategic use of reduction and repetition as a means of achieving liberation. A mural on the largest wall in the gallery demonstrates the potential of the rigorously prescribed meander removed from the canvas or paper to become a fully integrated architectural element. In Poliptih 1–4 (1976), the meander extends across four panels, while the 13-feet-wide JK F HC 91 1 (1991) invites total immersion in its symphonic movement.

A rich selection of works on paper chronicles his meditative use of repetition, from his seminal self-portrait series (1949–1951) and a group of early 1960s sketches mapping the gradual distillation of the meander to several highly saturated graphite drawings from later decades. These drawings provide unique insight into the artist’s working process and overall conceptual concerns. His notebooks, which he referred to as his “Banal Diary,” include entries written in horizontal and vertical blocks, taking on the form of the meander and illustrating the extent to which Knifer's artistic practice was inextricably linked to his daily life.

Recent solo exhibitions of Julije Knifer’s (b. 1924, Osijek, Croatia; d. 2004, Paris, France) work have been mounted at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb (2024); Neue Galerie Graz, Austria (2020); Museum der Wahrnehmung, Graz, Austria (2020); MAMCO, Geneva (2018); and Haus Konstruktiv, Zürich (2017). He represented Croatia at the 49th Venice Biennale (2001) and his work has been featured in recent group shows at Museo Nacional Centre de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2022–2023); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, the Netherlands (2022–2023); Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Austria (2022); Tate Modern, London (2019); and Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2018). His work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; and Nationalgalerie, Berlin.