Anchored in the Genius Loci

On the Second Edition of Marijan Bradanović’s Book Branko Fučić, Art Historian and Conservator

Abstract

In his review of Branko Fučić’s biography, Rijeka’s art historian Marijan Bradanović highlights the key features of the personal and scholarly habitus in the work and life of this prominent humanist from the second half of the 20th century. In the complex social circumstances of his times, Fučić developed a distinctive methodological approach to the history of art and culture, one that in a way anticipated contemporary global perspectives. His work identified the architectural and artistic dynamics of specific locales by studying the locally rooted specificities of life, shaped by the interplay of natural and cultural landscapes. Found at the periphery of mainstream academic and cultural life – first within the framework of socialist state and later amid the upheavals of the 1990s – Fučić reinvented his scholarship in methodologically innovative principles of an authentic humanist and firmly adhered to his meticulously constructed ethical standards, often at the cost of social and professional marginalization by political and cultural elites.