Zdravko Dučmelić, Borges’ favourite painter

Zdravko Dučmelić (1923-1989) was one of those outstanding, yet lesser known artists. He was born in Vinkovci, Croatia and have studied painting in Zagreb, Rome and Madrid (Real Academia de San Fernando), and in 1949 emigrated to Argentina. From 1963 to 1966 he was director of Escuela Superior de Artes de la Universidad Nacional de Cuyo.

Dučmelić masterfully illustrated a famous book “Laberintos” (Labyrinths), written by Jorge Luis Borges (Ed. De Arte Gaglianone, Buenos Aires, 1983), with his surreal, quasi-metaphysical works.
He also made various portraites of Borges (with whom he befriended) that were exhibited in 1987. In 1980 Dučmelić has been invited by Argentinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to realize expositions of his works in several museums in Japan: in Tokio, Kyoto, Aomori and Kamatura. Besides in Japan, Dučmelić had exhibitions in Panama, Peru (Lima), Chile (Santiago), Mexico, Cuba (Habana), Canada (Ottawa) and China (Bejing). In 1983 he had exhibitions in his homeland, in Zagreb and Rijeka.

Unfortunately, high quality images of his works are very difficult to find, so here are several examples ranging from poor to medium quality. The second drawing is one of the portraits of Jorge Luis Borges from the 1987 exhibition.