The Reapers

1937
tempera/paper
490 x 700 mm
signature: down in the left corner: M. Virius / 1937.

Five reapers in a field - four male and one female character. Around the field landscape with trees. In the right part of the stream. Unclear, blurred lines.

Mirko Virius was born on October 28 1889 in Djelekovec, a village near Koprivnica. He was part of the progressive peasant movement. He connected with painters from Hlebine, Ivan Generalic and Franjo Mraz - they are the founders of Croatian naive art. He participated in the first exhibition of peasant painters in Zagreb. He painted with watercolors, oil paintings and he made drawings. Themes of his works are social: the work in the countryside, home and life rural poverty. Due to political activity he was arrested and taken to a concentration camp in Zemun where he died in 1943.