Biography

Jadranka Damjanov, a full time professor in Methodology of Art History at the Faculty of Arts, University of Zagreb (already retired) was born 5th January 1934. in Subotica (Serbia- former Yougoslavia). She lives in Zagreb since 1952. Studied Art History and History at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Zagreb. She taught art at High school from 1958 till 1985. She did her doctor’s degree in 1963. Methodology of Art History she teaches at the same faculty since 1965 till 2002 (until 1983. parallel with teaching at High school). From 1980 she are teaching also students of pedagogical vocation of Art Academy. From 1959 till 1969 she is the redactor of a pupil’s annual. Besides numerous articles she has published several High school handbooks about art appreciation and history of art ( one of the handbooks has so far had thirty two editions, one of is translated on several languages –Hungarian, Rumanian, Slovakian, Russinian). There are two manuals for teachers and an art lexicon for pupils. Together with Dubravka Janda and Velibor Jerbić she did research for Unesco which was published under the title Cultural Contents in Education of Children and Youth in Zagreb and Paris 1976, 1977. Her handbook for university students Visual Language and Visual Art was published in 1991. The research that followed produced the book Eye movements and Pictures, Six Paintings of Croatian Modern Art in the Achievements of Experimental Aesthetics, published in 1996 together with a parallel translation in English. Since 1992 she has been leading together with students a workshop-based free school for comprehensive studies of art at Centre of culture and Education Zagreb. For her work she was awarded the State Prize of the Republic of Croatia in 1998. In 1999 published her Art adventure, notebook, together with its translation into English. Since 1998 she has been leading the project Zrinski and Europe (the first part of texts published in 2000. the second in 2003.)

Translates a great amount of novels from Hungarian and writes and translates for radio various texts. She also works on Hungarian-Croatian cultural connections (translating, editing, leading conferences).
She is an editor of various books and periodicals. Since 2000 she has been leading the project MSP Methodical syntagmas and paradigms on internet (http://195.29.243.219/avangarda-msp/ (Microsoft award for Croatia).
2006 she published The Metaphysics of Drawing (Hungarian translation 2009) and in 2008 Bestiarium.
There is a number of texts about her publications and work, mainly in Croatia, but also in other countries.