Biography

Ivan Rabuzin was born in 1921 in the Croatian village of Kljuc. In 1947 he graduated as Master Carpenter from the School of Applied Crafts in Zagreb. After his graduation he spent his evenings at night school learning how to draw and every free minute painting. After years of hard work he discovered his own poetic style of painting, while his theme is always Zagorje – his native land.
With his first one-man show in Zagreb in 1960 Rabuzin was recognized as one of the stars of Croatian naive art. In 1963 he started painting professionally and exhibited in Paris. The Paris show launched him in Europe and very soon the rest of the world. Ivan Rabuzin has exhibited all over the world at hundreds of exhibitions. He has received numerous awards for his work, while various films have been made about him and many monographs published in Europe and the United States. He died in 2008.