The Puppets of Zlatko Bourek

On March 6th, the exhibition "Uglies: The Puppets of Zlatko Bourek" opened at Galerija Kresija in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The exhibition was curated by Tjaša Juhart of the Puppet Museum of the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre.

Zlatko Bourek mostly created for an adult audience. The exhibition also presents his cult play Hamlet, which was the biggest hit in the field of puppet performances for adults in his oeuvre. In this, he first staged his own derivative of the Japanese technique of cart puppets, which the animators hold in their laps and lend them their legs. The play was a turning point for both Croatian puppetry and puppetry in the former commonwealth. It is inscribed in the canon of world puppetry, and it has traveled practically the entire world.

Zlatko was a true Renaissance man. He was a painter, sculptor, costume designer, scenographer, and illustrator. He directed theatre plays, feature films, and animated movies. 

I was pleased to see that the curator of the exhibition, Tjaša Juhart, decided to include my poster for his play Hamlet in the exhibition.

I met Zlatko for the first time when I was seventeen years old and I had a summer job working at Zagreb Film. In 1981 I was fortunate to design a poster for his puppet show of Hamlet by Tom Stoppard.

He was one of the most generous, soft-spoken people I have ever met. That's probably why we became friends, and that's probably why he painted me in one of his paintings.