Milan Goldschmiedt
Creative Studio of Visual Art
Milan Goldschmiedt was born in Zagreb on 7th November 1931.
He married Marina de Marsanich in 1968, with whom he had three children: Davor, Giada and Michael.
Talented already in his early youth, he painted his first oil painting in 1944, at the age of 13, entitled Landscape with the Big Apple, which immediately revealed his fantastic creative flair.
He graduated from high school and attended the Academy of Arts in Belgrade.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he began his artistic career in the field of illustration, caricatures and cartoons, collaborating with the humorous weekly newspaper Kerempuh and the historical newspaper Vjesnik, and founded, together with other artists, Duga Film, which later became the school of modern animated film, known throughout the world.
In 1952, he settled in Milan and devoted himself to animated films and comic strips, collaborating with several publishing houses in the Lombard capital and with set designer Ezio Frigerio.
During the following years he travelled to England, Germany, France, the USA, Mexico and Argentina, where he made a series of animated films for local TV stations. These were years in which he also dealt with important theatrical set design experiences.
In 1959, he returned to Milan and gave up animation films. He devoted himself to advertising graphics, working with several advertising agencies as an art director and immersing himself in the teeming artistic life of Brera, coming into contact with various contemporary artists of the time, including Carlo Carrà and Roberto Crippa.
From 1969 to 1972, he completed an interesting creative activity in the comic strips industry, with the invention of pleasant and psychologically well-defined characters such as Grap Vinelli, a harmless screwball with an enormous pepper nose, Jan Jasper, an obvious parody of the famous and snooty detective Sherlock Holmes, Don Vincenzo, a mild-mannered and modest country priest, up to the black humour of Oliver, a truculent brute with a bad temper. The dialogues have the immediacy and dazzling conciseness of the devised titles.
In 1974 he began his career in painting, embracing it almost completely, with a series of prestigious solo exhibitions in Italy and abroad, including Lugano (Switzerland), Fribourg (Switzerland), Caracas (Venezuela) and Shanghai (China). Augusto de Marsanich's Gallery Il Cannocchiale in Brera became his main promoter, contributing to the international dissemination of his artwork. In 1986, he began making bronze sculptures and in 1989 he participated in the XXXI Biennale d'Arte Città di Milano (Permanent).
In 1993, he produced the first poster for the Salone Internazionale del Giocattolo (The International Toys Fair), which was so successful that he was reappointed for the following years. He was invited by the Centre International de l'Art Fantastique in Gruyères (Château de Gruyères/Fribourg, Switzerland) in a group exhibition together with other internationally renowned artists and his
exhibition participation was renewed in the following years. With the works acquired over the years, the Gruyères Museum set up a permanent exhibition of his works in a prestigious room of the castle. In 2000, he was invited as guest of honour to the World Animation Film Festival in Zagreb, his hometown.
In 2004 he began experimenting with the new polymateric technique.
In 2007, Giorgio Mondadori Editore dedicated an anthological monograph to the artist entitled Milan Goldschmiedt. Singular creative path of an atypical artist. Works 1974-2007, with an introduction by art critic Luca Beatrice and texts by Flavio Guenzi.
He died in Milan on 26th August 2010 at the age of 78.
In subsequent years, prompted by his son Michael in particular, his works were exhibited in Milan and Bergamo in prestigious anthological exhibitions, and, in 2016, the Florence Biennale of Contemporary Art awarded the artist a Memorial Prize.
In 2022, at the former San Carpoforo Church of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, the art critic Marco Eugenio di Giandomenico together with the musicologist Roberto Favaro organised, as part of the "Sound and Art" fair, a workshop entitled PHANTA REI, with an exhibition of the main works of art by Milan Goldschmiedt and a concert of music by the violinist Yulia Berinskaya.
His works of art are part of prestigious public collections, including the Museo Nazionale d'Arte Moderna (Rome), the Museo dello Stato del Vaticano, the Museo del Bloch (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), the Museo Nacional de Caracas (Venezuela), the Musei Civici di Brescia, the Museo Civico
di Treviso, the Museo Civico di Novara, the Museo Civico e Pinacoteca di Macerata, the Musée International de l'Art Fantastique (Gruyères, Switzerland).