45th Children's October Salon - My Art Project for the Future

The exhibition will be opened by Velimir Karavelić MA, education counsellor
Programme: Choir of the kindergarten “Vila”, PI Days of Children

Theme of the 45th Children October Salon is “My Art Project for the Future”. It was conceived and devised by Angelina Folgić-Korjak, curator at the Museum who had been heading this manifestation for years. Among 300 works selected for the competition there were also works of pre-school children, works of pupils ranging from the first to eighth grade as well as works of those attending private atelier courses and workshops for talented children in all fields of visual and applied art. Decorative panels, applied graphics, illustrations, caricature, comic strips, photographs, ceramics, models of architectural objects or of the interior design are among these achievements.

Little authors were inspired by forms and manifestations of life in the future, on our planet and in other galaxies. As natural as the life around them, animals and the environment are to children so are beings from the outer space, robots or spaceships from the future. Children offered armful of ideas and concepts as to how towns would look in the future. These ranged from witty or catastrophic images of our ecological future to new cities with space viewed from the most unusual perspective – ambience of the future with abundance of electronic control systems, transparent museums and railways, dynamic traffic. The influence of television and computers on the visual culture of children was obvious. There were illustrations, design sketches for cars, as well as fashion designs. In the “town of children” there were children playgrounds, their pets, candy stores, fruits and vegetables or clowns. Family issues were also present as visual images of children’s experiences from their everyday life, plays, socialising.

The most frequent form were drawings executed in various techniques and media from pencils, coloured pencils, chalk, felt pen, ink. Every year increases the number of works of children who feel comfortable when working on large size formats and using paints and painting techniques such as tempera, collages, combination of media. There is also quite a number of group works which is especially stimulating children’s mutual communication and developing their abilities for spontaneous coordination.

To realise their art projects for the future children imagined, improvised and created. In cooperation with and tutored by educators children gained rich experience in learning and creating, in developing their sense for improvisation which would later help them to better master real and unexpected challenges. In the exhibition catalogue the curator A. F. Korjak said: “Education of art is important since the future is now built through children for creative development society of culture which tames and overpowers the chaotic processes through mutual understanding of generations and opens space for changes and space for honouring tradition.” For decades the Museum of Applied Art had been pursuing this goal.