The Atrium & Normans
Low Wood Bay Resort & Spa
Milan Ivanic
Art work by Milan Ivanič
Art work by Milan Ivanič
Milan Ivanič has lived and worked in the north west of England since 1986. His work over the past six decades consists of what he calls ‘drawing-paintings’ in a wide range of subjects and media.
In this exhibition, drawings and paintings are interspersed. They show the enormous diversity of Milan’s work, yet they also show how drawing is integral to his paintings, and how he ‘paints’ with immensely varied fields of marks in his pen-and-ink work.
Milan has worked, exhibited and sold in the UK, Europe, the US and Australia.
Milan’s work became more well known when one of his large-scale pen and ink drawings was selected for the 2011 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, and his portrait ‘The History Men’ was selected for inclusion in the 2015 National Portrait Gallery’s annual portrait award exhibition.
Gavaganart, in Lancaster, works with artists from throughout the British Isles with an emphasis on artists from the North of England with many artists based in either Yorkshire, Lancashire or Cumbria.
In partnership with Gavagan Art, Art in the Atrium at Low Wood Bay Resort & Spa provides an accessible, free and informal way of being able to see a display of fine art in the resorts' spacious Atrium.
Milan was born in Slovakia just after the end of World War II. His parents moved to the Sudetenland to take up jobs in an industrial city on the banks of the river Elbe.
He was ‘the boy who couldn’t stop drawing’: his talent was recognised by his teachers at an early age and he was encouraged to give up football and apply to the Hollar School of Art in Prague. From there he gained a place at the highly selective Academy of Fine Arts. He was on course to become, a state-recognised artist, when he met Roz, a gap-year student from the south east of England.
In 1970, Milan left everything behind and came to England to marry Roz. Here he had no contacts in the art world. Navigating social, cultural and political differences, he began life as a freelance artist from scratch as an immigrant to this country.
They lived in Sussex, Devon and London, unable to travel outside the UK until Milan got his British passport in 1977.
In 1986 Milan and Roz moved to Lancaster, following their love for the northern landscape. He continued to work as an artist alongside bringing up their two children. When he has to complete a bureaucratic form, and it asks ‘Intended age of Retirement’ he scoffs at the question and says: ‘If you have to answer, write 100.’
Other artists whose work curated by Gavagan Art, that have had exhibitions as part of the Art in the Atrium gallery.
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