Julije Knifer is today largely recognised as one of the most prominent Croatian painters of the 20th Century. One of the founding members of the 1960s Croatian avant-garde group Gorgona, his oeuvre is centralised over the exploration of a single form – the meander, which started in the late 1950s and later developed into the single central point of his artistic production. 
The artist arrived at the meander whilst searching for the utter reduction of all expressive elements: "Within a few months I came, as it were, to the end, that is to a black and white painting (which I referred to as an anti-painting) – to a meander from which one simply cannot go any further“. In art iconography, the winding meander of the river has been used since the earliest artistic production and is considered a synonym for the eternal flow of life; however, to Knifer the meander was a key to a world in which chronology had no meaning, and a way of creating works that were beyond their singular self, but part of a group of works that he continued to paint until the very last days of life. 
Gorgona group, which Knifer co-founded, was international both in its core activities and in its ethos. Archives of the group reveal regular exchanges between Croatian artists associated with the group and their international contemporaries, including Lucio Fontana, Robert Rauschenberg and Piero Manzoni. Furthermore, François Morellet, Piero Dorazio and Victor Vasarely exhibited with Gorgona in the first exhibition of the New Tendencies movement in Zagreb in 1961.
Knifer articulated the meander conceptually in his early sketches before he formally started painting the motif, and his life-long dedication to this simple form - the study of absence, the reduction and complete perfection in execution - reveals an artist who found his meditative outlet in the process of painting. Much like On Kawara in his Date Paintings, Knifer used a singular theme in his work to record the timeless existence and repetition of the purest, simplest form, creating calmness and beauty that exudes from these works. 

Venice Biennial

Venice

Osijek

Dallas

Galerie Frank Elbaz

Bologna

P420

New York City

Mitchell-Innes & Nash

Paris

Basel

Galerie Gisèle Linder

Galerie Lahumière

Berlin

Gregor Podnar

London

Tate Modern

Moscow

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum Für Gegenwart

MoMA

Metz

Centre Pompidou Metz

Genève

Musée D'Art Moderne Et Contemporain - Mamco

Dubrovnik

Museum of Modern Art Dubrovnik

Barcelona

Macba

Cambridge

Kettle's Yard

Centre Pompidou

Los Angeles

Lacma

Grenoble

Musée De Grenoble

Dijon

Le Consortium

Cnac Grenoble (Le Magasin)

Nice

Villa Arson

Zagreb

Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb

Milan

Palazzo Reale

Tokyo

National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo

Essen

Museum Folkwang

Graz

Museum der Wahrnehmung

Zürich

Haus Konstruktiv

Julije Knifer

Untitled