The founders of naive art– Zuzana Halupova

Zuzana Halupova was born in Kovačica in 1925. She finished five grades of elementary school. She painted her first oil painting in 1964, “Hemp Beating”. Her success was meteoric. She started collaborating with the Gallery of Naive Art in Svetozarevo and exhibited for the first time in Kovačica during Kovačica...

© Goran Gajić

  • Zuzana Halupova was born in Kovačica in 1925. She finished five grades of elementary school.
  • She painted her first oil painting in 1964, “Hemp Beating”. Her success was meteoric.
  • She started collaborating with the Gallery of Naive Art in Svetozarevo and exhibited for the first time in Kovačica during Kovačica October. Her first solo exhibition was in Dubrovnik in 1968, when many enthusiastic foreigners bought all the paintings.
  • Children are the main motif of Zuzana Halupova’s artistic expression. She even painted adults as children; the only difference was the mustache she painted on the adults. Not a small number of her works were painted for humanitarian purposes.
  • In 1974, Halupova painted “UN Children” for the UNICEF. In the same year, UNICEF printed her painting “Winter” in the form of New Year’s greeting cards in two million copies.
  • Numerous publications and documentaries about the life of Zuzana Halupova have been published.
  • She passed away in 2001.
  • The Gallery of Naive Art holds 31 of Halupova’s original works in its collection.