Semi-abstract animal sculpture “Elephant” by SIME, artificial marble

Born Mladen Simunovic in Gorica, Croatia, in 1968, the painter and sculptor Sime belongs to a young generation of artists who no longer see the question of tradition and modernity as opposites. Rather, his sculptures reveal that the "old" themes of art are far from exhausted for him: he continually extracts new, refreshingly subjective perspectives from them. Sime, who completed training at the Center for Applied Arts and Design (1985-1987) before studying sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (1988-1993), likes to develop his sculptural work based on numerous preparatory drawings – a process in which what later takes on a three-dimensional form in clay, plaster, wood, or bronze gradually "takes shape" on the drawing paper.