The 4th Balogijada – an exhibition of art on the occasion of the ninetieth anniversary of the birth of Zvonimir Balog

Children’s works from the 4^th Balogijada, one of the largest Croatian national events intended for primary/elementary school students, who have participated in this literary-scenographic and artistic competition, are exhibited in the Krka National Park.

Eighty-seven art works by students were presented today to visitors of the Krka National Park at Skradinski buk as part of the 4^th Balogijada, a literary-scenographic and artistic competition intended for students of Croatian primary or elementary schools, organized by the Grigor Vitez Elementary School, in Sveti Ivan Žabno.

The goal of the Balogijada is to encourage students’ scenographic and artistic creativity, to develop the imagination of children and creative enthusiasm, with the aim of forming original, ambitious, and creative young people. The event promotes Balog’s poetic opus, created from play, imagination, wordplay, optimism, and humour.

“It is a great honour for us that visitors to the Krka National Park and the local community will be able to become acquainted with the event and enjoy the exhibition of the most successful student works of art from the 4^th Balogijada. This is not only a major recognition of our event, but also a significant promotion in an international framework. We are very grateful to the Park for its friendliness and openness, and for allowing us to arrange the exhibition in such beautiful locations”, stated Tomislav Hrebak, director of the Balogijada event.

This spring, more than one thousand and one hundred students from all over Croatia took part in competitions within the framework of the 4^th Balogijada, and interpreted Balog’s poems by creating works of art based on motifs in them. The forty best works won prizes, which included tickets to national parks and nature parks, because the theme of this year’s celebratory 4^th Balogijada was the collection of his poems, Merry Geography. The Krka National Park, along with fifteen other national and nature parks, supported the event by donating tickets and gift packages to the rewarded students.

“We were very happy to become involved in the Balogijada project and thus enable the organizers, the students, and their parents to learn in more detail about the exceptional features of the Krka River and the rich heritage of our homeland. We encourage every form of creative artistic creation, be it artistic, literary, or musical, that is related to the acquisition of new knowledge, especially if it concerns the natural features of Our Beautiful Croatia”, stated Nella Slavica, director of the Krka National Park.

This year, the date May 30 marks ninety years since the writer Zvonimir Balog was born. Balog was the most awarded Croatian children’s writer as well as a skilled artist. It is less known that, in addition to his rich literary production, from 1958 to 1967 he taught art to students in his hometown of Sveti Petar Čvrstec and also in Sveti Ivan Žabno near Križevci, and that his students won prizes in various competitions. In recognition of this, the primary school in Sveti Ivan Žabno, the town where Balog wrote the legendary book Invisible Iva, has been organizing the Balogijada since 2019.

“Zvonko Balog created a completely new reality with his words. He played with words and captured their essence in them. Everything he did was addressed to the child who lives in us, and, when we grow up, to the child in us who keeps us alive”, emphasized Zvonimir Ilijić, theatre director, screenwriter, associate, and friend of Zvonimir Balog, who collaborates on the Balogijada, and continued: “Joy is present in everything he wrote. He left us a legacy of joy. Because playing is joy. And life, if we let it be, is a beautiful endless game”.

From July 27 to the end of August, the works from the Balogijada in the Krka National Park can be viewed in the watermill at Roški slap, and they will also be permanently available through a virtual exhibition on the official website of the Balogijada.

“The never ending road

If poets steered boats,

They would always

Sail by their star”

Zvonimir Balog