“I never or seldom say, that I’m a painter because I think it means nothing.”

Slavko Kopac

“Today, everything is written down, recorded, that moment has no longer any sense. A painter today doesn’t have to and mustn’t be any longer the painter of that reality.”

Slavko Kopac

“Picasso was the first to say: “Open the windows!”. I’m adding that it is not enough. Open your windows and doors and not only open but smash the glass, as windows and doors can be closed, that’s why they need to be smashed.”

Slavko Kopac

“Picasso was the first to say: “Open the windows!”. “I’m feeling as a great sinner.”

Slavko Kopac

“Normally, I don’t like the word – professionally – profession is something which deforms you. A painter who is a professional, he is, I think, a lost man. Painting, it is like breathing. You work because you have to, because it makes you happy and, as for a painful childbirth, I don’t know of it”.

Slavko Kopac
Slavko Kopač portrait

Slavko
Kopac

Slavko Kopač (1913–1995) was a Croatian-born artist whose work defied categorization, moving freely between drawing, painting, sculpture, and material experimentation. Closely associated with Jean Dubuffet and the Art Brut movement, Kopač developed a visual language rooted in instinct, matter, and poetic freedom.

His artistic philosophy rejected academic constraint in favor of raw expression, where gesture and material became extensions of inner necessity rather than style. For Kopač, art was not a profession — it was a state of being.

1913 — 1995 • Art Brut • Paris