About the author
Antun Mateš was born on November 23rd, 1945 in Zagreb. In the Zagreb School for applied arts, he finished the Department for graphic arts and design. He studied painting at the Academy for plastic arts and finished his studies in 1969; his professor was the famous Croatian figurative painter Miljenko Stančić.
During his school and studying days, Antun Mateš was very active in sports. First it was athletics, then wrestling, Greek-Roman style, in the clubs Prvomajska and Lika, where he achieved considerable results. After his active sports career, he became designer in the publishing house Vjesnik and devoted himself to the love of his youth – sport fishing.
Very soon, he began to co-operate with the editorial departments of sport fishing papers, and for one year he was the editor of the popular section Big and small fish in the weekly magazine SN Revija (Sport paper Review). He took part in several competitions for the prize Golden Fishing Rod in the weekly magazine Vikend (Weekend). After having won 17 trophies in this competition, he became part of its jury.
As painter he had over 100 exhibitions; half of them were independent exhibitions. Apart from Zagreb, Croatia and Europe, he held exhibitions in the whole world – in America, Asia, India, Australia and Argentina, in the galleries of New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, Mainz, Munich, Frankfurt, Sydney, Melbourne, Portland, Swan Hill, New Delhi, Buenos Aires etc. Until now he has published 7 albums of graphics together with the most important Croatian authors: Matko Peić, Dragutin Tadijanović, Josip Bratulić, Igor Zidić and Goran Tribuson, who is also the author of the texts in the big monograph Mateš Paintings and Remembrances.
From 1987 to 1995, he was professor and head of the Department for graphics in the same school, which he himself attended as a boy. In 1996, at the world’s biggest book fair in Frankfurt, his graphics portfolio European Strolls was awarded the first prize. Among the competitors were calendars with illustrations by August Mack, Andy Warhol, Claude Monet, Henry Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Juan Miró, Egon Schiele etc.
His next portfolio, Dawn of the Millennium, had the same success. In 2000, on the 50th jubilee calendar exhibition in Stuttgart, among internationally chosen competitors from the USA, Great Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, Italy etc. it won the first prize.
The work of this painter can be seen in many collections, galleries and museums in the whole world, as well as in the Zagreb Modern Gallery, the Croatian National Library, the Graphics Cabinet and the Town Museum of Zagreb.
