The start of the city promenade and the city's lane 1995

Alfred Freddy Krupa made this ink drawing, "The start of the city promenade and the city's lane," in 1996. It pictures a lane with trees and a building. The sketchiness of this work seems in line with the artist's general interest in ink drawing and Sumi-e, but one also wonders about its possible social meaning. Krupa was born in Croatia, then part of Yugoslavia, a state that collapsed in a series of brutal wars in the 1990s. Though there is nothing obviously "political" about the drawing, could it be seen as a kind of search for the familiar amid violence and instability? Is the lane depicted one the artist knew in his childhood? Or is it an imagined space of peace and quiet? These questions are difficult to answer. To know more, a historian might research the artist’s biography and the history of Croatia. The meaning of art is always contingent on the social and institutional contexts in which it is made and viewed.