Hvar City Theatre Days, Vol. 52 No. 1, 2026.
Original scientific paper
Choreography of Image: Anka Krizmanić’s »Dancers« in an Intermedial Perspective
Ana Šeparović
Abstract
The 130th anniversary of the birth of Anka Krizmanić (1896–1987), one of the rare
painters who are considered among the great artists in Croatian art, is an opportunity to
undertook an intermedial approach on her series of drawings of dance, created between
1913 and 1917, considering it as a form of transposition of dance into painting. Educated
during the First World War in Dresden – the city where Expressionism was born – Anka
Krizmanić developed an interest in the performing arts, and through her drawings we can
follow the development of modern dance – from ballet (in depictions of Anna Pavlova)
and popular social dances (her »Spanish dancers«), through free dance (in drawings of
Grete Wiesenthal), all the way to expressive dance (in depictions of Gertrud Leistikow).
The research showed that Anka Krizmanić made an insightful transposition of dance into
visual form, by adapting her artistic vocabulary to the specific characteristics of each of the
three dance models (ballet, free dance and expressive dance), through four key categories
(body image, movement, space and time), simultaneously demonstrating an exceptional
understanding of the essence of both media – dance and painting. With this, she presents
herself as an authentic avant-garde artist, evoking the dynamism and speed of movement,
but also the spiritual anxiety of wartime, using the formal models of Futurism and Expressionism, as a strong reference to the global moment.
Keywords
Anka Krizmanić; drawings; ballet; free dance; expressive dance
Hrčak ID:
347170
URI
Publication date:
6.5.2026.
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