Biography
Zupan in Paris, 1963
BRUNO ZUPAN was born in 1939 in Slovenia. Once his studies in Zagreb, Croatia were completed in 1962 he emigrated to Paris where he enjoyed a thoroughly bohemian lifestyle with artists and students from many countries. He traveled to New York and Boston in 1964, and became an American citizen in 1969. He has been honored with over 200 exhibitions in museums and galleries in the United States, Europe, Japan and Kuwait, and has published 50 limited edition serigraphs and lithographs in Paris and Mallorca.
In 1976 he was awarded life membership in the Society of French Artists, and in 1981 and 1991 he received special commissions to create First Day Covers for the World Federation of United Nations Associations Philatelic Program. In 1993 the Vallardarez Foundation sponsored an exhibition of his work at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The Columbus Museum of Art curated his first retrospective exhibition to coincide with his sixtieth birthday in 2000. To accompany this event, two books were published. Bruno Zupan, One Artist presents a large selection of his work in oil and watercolor and at the same time describes his unique lifestyle and painting technique. Bruno Zupan, Graphic Work is a complete catalogue of his prints.
With tremendous personal pleasure Zupan accepted the invitation to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of George Sand extended jointly by the Festival Chopin in Valldemossa, Mallorca and the Year of George Sand Committee in France. He prepared two widely acclaimed exhibitions for the Musée du Château d’Ars in La Châtre, France, and the Royal Carthusian Monastery of Valldemossa.
The Boston Museum of Fine Art invited Zupan, known for his grands bouquets romantíques, to exhibit his work at their annual Art in Bloom exhibition in 2015. Zupan has frequently noted that Boston is the smartest city in the world and he knows that the Boston Public Library, along with over a hundred prestigious colleges and universities, has had a large hand in cultivating that honor. In 2019, at the occasion of the second retrospective of his work and his twentieth individual exhibition at the Galerie d’Orsay, The Boston Public Library acquired a large scale Zupan painting depicting the iconic Boston Common with Boylston Street leading to Copley Square. This was an exciting event at the Boston Public Library as they had not added to their collection in years. It is also an incredible honor for Zupan’s painting to hang alongside such greats as Sargent, Rembrandt, Puvís de Chavannes, Titian and numerous other masters.
His twenty exhibitions in New York between 1983 and 1998 inspired a great deal of critical comment since his style and subject matter were so determinedly out of sync with the times:
“Part of Zupan’s appeal is his willingness to take the necessary risks in terms of putting the emotive element back into landscape painting. He possesses the stunning confidence to put aside historical timidity and confront nature directly, and he has the rare painterly ability to translate passionate responses to it into transcendent works of art. His rhapsodic brushwork and singular vision have garnered him a worldwide following among those who still seek beauty in the art of painting. Bruno Zupan is one of the last great romantics and for that alone his work is worth treasuring.” -Ed McCormack, ArtSpeak, New York 1997.
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Public Collections
American Ballet Theater
American Family Life Assurance Corporation
Bank of America
The Carter Center, Atlanta, Georgia
Colquitt County Arts Center, Moultrie, Georgia
Columbus Bank and Trust Company
Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Georgia
Macon Museum of Art
Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, S.C.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Museo de Arte de la Cartuja, Valldemossa
Museo de Mallorca
Oklahoma City Museum of Art
Philatelic Museum, Palais des Nations, Geneva
Schlumberger Corporation
Synovus Financial Corp.
Total System Services
United Nations Headquarters, New York
Valladarez Foundation
Morris Museum, Augusta, Georgia
Musée du Château d’Ars, La Châtre, France
W.C. Bradley Museum of Art
Boston Public Library
Private Collections
S.A.R. Doña Pilar de Borbón
Tom Brokaw
Colleen Dewherst
Charlotte Saunders
Margot Fonteyn
Frederick Franklin
Marion Javits
Erica Jong
Prince and Princess Michael of Kent
Bruno Magli
Natasha Makarova
HRH Princess Grace of Monaco
The Perl Collection
The Rockefeller Collection
Condes de Montrico
The Rothschild Collection
Sheikha Alia Mubarak Al Sabah
George C. Scott
Hedrick Smith
The Swarovski Family of Austria
Baron H. H. Thyssen-Bornemiza
Jacques Valenti
Terry Vanderbilt
Li Xiannian, President of the Peopleʼs Republic of China
Dr. Simon Suen
Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wickwire