Croatian Museum of Naive Art

Croatian Museum of Naïve Art

Hrvatski muzej naivne umjetnosti
Croatian Museum of Naïve Art in Zagreb
Established	1952
Location	Sv. Ćirila i Metoda 3, Zagreb, Croatia
Coordinates	45°48′55.5″N 15°58′24″E / 45.815417°N 15.97333°E / 45.815417; 15.97333
Type	Art museum
Collection size	1,900 objects
Visitors	12,000 (2009)
Director	Mira Francetić Malčić
Curator	Svjetlana Sumpor
Website	http://www.hmnu.hr

The Croatian Museum of Naïve Art (Croatian: Hrvatski muzej naivne umjetnosti) is a fine art museum in Zagreb, Croatia dedicated to the work of naïve artists of the 20th century. The museum holdings consist of over 1,900 works of art - paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints, mainly by Croatians but also by other well-known international artists in the genre.

From time to time, the museum organizes topics and retrospective exhibitions by naïve artists, expert meetings and educational workshops and playrooms.

The museum is located on the first floor of the 18th-century Raffay Palace, 350 square metres (3,800 sq ft), in Gornji Grad at Sv. Ćirila i Metoda 3.

On November 1, 1952, the Peasant Art Gallery (Seljačka umjetnička galerija) was founded in Zagreb. By 1956 it was known as the Gallery of Primitive Art (Galerija primitivne umjetnosti), and was then part of the Zagreb Municipal Galleries (today the Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb). Since 1994, in line with a decision by the Croatian Parliament, its title has been the Croatian Museum of Naive Art. From the very beginning the establishment was organized and run according to strict museological principles, and is deemed to be the world's first museum of naive art. According to the Croatian Ministry of Culture, those principles include: systematic collection, preservation, restoration, conservation, presentation and permanent protection of museum objects from the jurisdiction of the museum. Since 1997, the museum has undertaken many pedagogical ventures. Since 2002, the museum has concentrated on outreach to schools and the student public and intensified teaching each year in the period just before international museum day, May 18. For this day, the museum organizes educational exhibitions, workshops and brochures geared toward younger audiences in order to educate and increase museum visitation.

Naïve, or primitive art is a distinct segment of the art of the 20th century. In Croatia, naïve art was at first connected with the works of peasants and working men, ordinary men and women, of whom the most successful, over the course of time, became professional artists. Naïve art assumes the work of artists who are more or less self-taught, painters and sculptors with no formal art training, but who have achieved their own creative style and a high level of art. An identifiably individual style and poetic nature distinguishes the Naïve from other "amateur" painters and sculptors, and from the general self-taught artist. The view of a Naïve artist will usually display unusual proportions and perspective, and certain illogicalities of form and space. Such characteristics are the expression of a free creative imagination, in a similar way to other 20th-century art movements such as Symbolism, Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism.