Tafil Musović – Forgotten Drawings and More

20 April – 9 May 2026

In the critical reception of Musović’s work, a strong intellectual foundation is evident, along with an affinity for tradition and its sources, and the cultivation of links with cultural history and major artistic references—Pessoa, Lorca, Beckmann, Bacon, Uccello, Masaccio, Munch, Tešić, Marčetić—who form a powerful framework for the painter’s dialogue on the perennial themes of identity and existence. This is a culture under pressure, in which the terms exodus and/or exile emerge as markers of time, condensed into strong visual signs of states and conditions; fluid metaphorical reflections of the voice of conscience are legible within a critical reception shaped by an archetypal, intuitive, and contemplative flow.

Driven by intense creative energy and dedication, this selection of 55 works from his oeuvre marks fifty years since the artist’s debut exhibition at the Graphic Collective.

Indicative is Musović’s self-reflective note in the catalogue: “We live in a time burdened with everything and anything. Or in a time in which an eternal winter is emerging. A world without people. Speaking about forgotten drawings is a moment of recollection and, at the same time, a moment in which reality yields to the past. I am fortunate that my life companion, for about forty years now, has unobtrusively followed my work. When my drawing begins to wander from one place to another, she knows: it is time for that drawing to move to the part of the studio where the drawers are. I usually keep nothing in those drawers, as some of them are difficult to open, which annoys me. In this way, a large part of my drawings has moved into those drawers. The life of these drawings, through the drawers, has been extended in my forgetting, as with new works their existence is almost completely erased. One day my wife appeared, perhaps a year ago, with more than a hundred drawings I thought I had destroyed. I was pleasantly surprised. And so these forgotten drawings, instead of remaining in drawers, will enter the Graphic Collective Gallery. My wife, Jessica, saved them from the one who drew them. (Still, I am not Gogol’s Taras Bulba.)

Ultimately, what are these works? They are part of my new works. In fact, they are paintings on paper. Reality is a scale with two sides: on one is the present, on the other the past. The present is arrogant and intrusive and forgets how much it depends on the past. It is not an enthusiast of dialectics. I have learned: there is a secret hand, not of the market (Adam Smith), but a secret hand of love that cares for me and my work.” — written as an Ode to his wife last March in Amsterdam.