Milan Mrkusich

Milan Mrkusich, ONZM (born 5 April 1925, Dargaville) is a New Zealand artist and designer. He is considered a pioneer of abstract painting in New Zealand and one of New Zealand's most important living artists. Retrospective exhibitions of his work were organised by the Auckland Art Gallery in 1972 and 1985, and at the Gus Fisher Gallery in 2009. A substantial monograph was published by Auckland University Press in 2009.
He was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit (ONZM) in 1997 and one of ten inaugural Icon Award recipients by the Arts Foundation of New Zealand in 2003. His work is held in most significant public collections in New Zealand including Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland Art Gallery, Christchurch Art Gallery, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Dunedin Public Art Gallery and The University of Auckland.

Milan Mrkusich was born in Dargaville to emigrant parents from Podgora, Dalmatia. The family moved to Auckland in 1927, and Milan attended St Joseph's Convent (Parnell), Marist Brothers School (Ponsonby), and Sacred Heart College.

In 1942 he took an apprenticeship in Writing and Pictorial Arts at Neuline Studios and attended the Seddon Memorial Technical College (now Auckland University of Technology) commercial art course.

Influenced by the Bauhaus movement, it is probably no coincidence that Mrkusich's first solo exhibition was hels at The University of Auckland's School of Architecture in 1949.

Formed in 1949, Brenner Associates comprised architects Stephen Jelicich, Desmond Mullen and Vladimir Cacala, working with Mrkusich and designer John Butterworth. Aside from architectural work, Brenner offered integrated interior, exhibition, lighting and furniture design, for which Mrkusich contributed interior and furniture design, as well as designing and building his own (award-winning) home (1950).

In the 1970s, with fellow pioneer of New Zealand abstraction, Gordon Walters, Mrkusich exhibited at the Petar/James Gallery, run from 1972-76 by outspoken art dealer brothers Petar and James Vuletic. Like American critic Clement Greenberg, Vuletic had strong views on modernism and championed a group of like-minded artists, he had purchased works by Mrkusich and Walters in 1968. Other artists in the Vuletic circle include Stephen Bambury, Richard Killeen, and Ian Scott.