Đuro Seder was born in Zagreb in 1927. The entirety of his academic journey was dedicated to the arts. He attended the First Classical Gymnasium in Zagreb and graduated from the Classical Gymnasium in Split in 1946. He then enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, where he studied under Professor Antun Mejzdić, graduating in 1951. Continuously curious, he specialised in painting under Prof Marino Tartaglia. Comfortable in the academic environment, he taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb starting in 1981, subsequently became a full professor and continued to teach until his retirement in 1998. He still retains the status of professor emeritus.
Seder’s career is inseparable from his activity within the Gorgona Group, which was active in Zagreb between 1959 and 1966, and also included Josip Vaništa, Julije Knifer, the sculptor Ivan Kožarić, critics Radoslav Putar, Matko Meštrović and Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos and the architect Miljenko Horvat. The group did not develop a homogenous aesthetic or style, and instead, each member was able to cultivate their own creative autonomy. The unifying ideology was one of experimentation, unconventional forms and anti-establishment methods developed along three main axes: the exhibitions at Studio G (1961–1963, Schira Salon, Zagreb), the publication of the anti-magazine ‘Gorgona’ (1961–1966 – each edition was a work of art in itself) and the creation of concepts, projects and various forms of artistic communication.
This informalism offered Seder the full freedom to create abstract chromatic experimentations, which ranged from rich colourful compositions to sombre monochrome and seemingly ‘empty’ images. This evolution is a commentary on the practice itself, a tautological reflection focused on the creation of images in a meta-critical approach to the practice of painting.
In parallel to his work as a plastic artist, Seder has also written poetry. Throughout the 1960s and ‘70s he published poetry in the journals Razlog, Kolo, Forum and Republika. As the Gorgona Group chapter of his career came to a close, he published an essay titled ‘The Impossibility of Image’ (1971) and later followed up with ‘The Possibility of Image’ (1981). In 1978, he published a collection of poems, Father from a Pot, with the help of the University of Zagreb.
He has been a full member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Art since 2000, and since 2011, he has been the Head of the Academy’s Glyptotheque.
Seder lives and works in Zagreb.
