Mirko Virius - The Procession, tempera

Mirko Virius was a Croatian naïve painter. He was one of the three most prominent members of the first generation of the Hlebine School. Virius was born in the village of Đelekovec near Koprivnica, where he completed four years of primary school. In the First World War, he fought as an Austro-Hungarian soldier in Galicia. He was captured by Russians and made a forced laborer in Kiev, Kharkiv and the Ekaterinoslav iron plant. He returned from Russia in the spring of 1918 and remained in Zagreb until the war ended.