19 Facts About Ignjat Job

Ignjat "Ignjo" Job was an important representative of colour expressionism in the art scene of Yugoslavia during the 1930s.

Ignjat Job is best known for his series of paintings inspired by life on the island of Brac.

Ignjat Job's paintings depicted the Mediterranean landscape, motifs of the town of Supetar, fishing themes, and more rarely portraits and nudes.

Ignjat Job's family hailed from Udine, modern-day Italy, but came to identify first as Catholic Serbs and then as Croats; Job himself identified as a Serb.

In 1913, when Ignjat Job was 18, his daughter, Marija, was born.

In 1917 Ignjat Job moved to Zagreb with his mother and younger brother Nikola, where he enrolled in the Arts and Crafts College.

In that same year, Ignjat Job's mother died, and due to irregular attendance, he lost his place at college.

Ignjat Job now found himself dependent on the goodwill of friends, and increasingly prone to bouts of depression and ill-health.

In December 1920, Ignjat Job went to Italy, visiting Rome, Naples and Capri.

Ignjat Job converted to Orthodox Christianity and married his second wife in the Church of Saint Sava in Belgrade.

Ignjat Job's son Rastko, named after his godfather the writer Rastko Petrovic, was born in October 1925.

Ignjat Job's focus was on recording the impulse of his personal feelings, and strong expressiveness became a feature of his work.

Between 1934 and 1935, Ignjat Job lived in Belgrade and Zagreb, then returned to Supetar.

Ignjat Job died of tuberculosis in a Zagreb clinic on 28 April 1936.

However, inspired by the scenes of his native Dalmatia, and driven by his own personal demons, Ignjat Job went on to become one of the most expressive painters in the Croatian modern art scene of the 1920s and 30s.

Ignjat Job saw landscape as a symbol, and used colour as an expression of his emotions, his personal experience of life and his reaction to the environment and its native people.

Ignjat Job's art was grounded in the earthy island lifestyle, and he pursued his own personal vision.

Ignjat Job was a careful observer, with a lot of sense for humour, for the comic and tragicomic, for the mad, the ridiculous, the fantastic and the drunk.

Ignjat Job's works have been included in the anthologies of Croatian, Serbian, and Yugoslav art.