The Croatian architect Josip Picman was one of the first people who graduated from the Technical Faculty in Zagreb in 1929. After graduation he moved to Berlin and worked in the studio of the architect Hans Poelzig on designs for the I. G. Farben-Industrie in Frankfurt. During his stay in Berlin Picman witnessed his teacher's shift from expressionism to functionalism. Pragmatism, expressivity and simplicity of structure which characterized Poelzig's architecture became the features of Picman's architecture upon his return to Zagreb, accompanied with his creativity and aesthetic maturity. Fostering German spirit in Croatian cultural milieu meant turning away from the Viennese (mainly aesthetic) influences towards the engagement and social component pertaining to the German cultural circle. Within such climate Picman's architecture was characterized by pragmatism, expressivity and simplicity. From his return from Berlin in the 1930s to his tragic death, the architect Picman created numerous competition entries. He was affiliated with the establishment of the Zagreb Working Group which engaged in a number of public activities that included the participation in the research project on building problems in the case of a Zagreb residential zone. The designs were presented during work on the Athens Charter in 1933. Alongside active engagement at the 4(th) CIAM congress as a member of the Zagreb Working Group, Picman was a member of the socially engaged group Zemlja from its establishment in 1929 to the injunction of its activities in 1935 (a year before his tragic death). In the architectural reflections within the group architecture was considered a generator of all improvements in society and the means of rising social standard. Architects were acknowledged as the main holders of such views as well as supporters of the art movement New Objectivity. By establishing the socially engaged group Zemlja Croatian cultural milieu showed social sensitivity, which was characteristic for the European artistic ferment in the 1920s. As a left wing of the post First World War expressionist poetics the European movement New Objectivity also had considerable influence in Croatia. Inexorable engagement of the architect Picman contributed to the Croatian cultural climate of the age by his promotion of socio-ethical values and authentic architectural oeuvre. The paper presents and interprets for the first time drawings made by the architect Josip Picman (19041936), kept in the Picman family collection, which were displayed in 1998 at the architect's retrospective exhibition at the Croatian Museum of Architecture in Zagreb. Thirty seven works from the family collection of drawings (owned by the architect's nephew Prof. Dragutin Picman) were chosen and exhibited in five thematic units: landscapes and drawings of nature, intimist interiors, architectural phantasmagorias (city, island, fortifications, expressionist sceneries and the like), caricatures and masks. The paper aims to assume more integral approach to the architect's oeuvre in order to reach the depths of his creativity with special attention paid to the known facts which take us to the architect's complex and complicated intimacy. In his drawings Picman was focused on space, his hidden intimacy, fantasy, hopes which do not address him as an architect. Picman's drawings are complementary to architecture, though his phantasmagorias belong to the spheres unattainable by architecture, such as the male figure collage, masks, surreal figures and the like. Landscapes are characterized by similar atmosphere, motifs and drawing strokes creating an essence of the images, their singular mood and effects of light. The dates of the drawings are mostly unknown, except in the case of the last works, that is, the numerous phantasmagorias and masks which contain the exact dates. The drawings are often accompanied with textual comments, reviews, evaluations, explorations which is all frequently rather difficult to understand from an architectural point of view. The drawings become the architect's means of communication with the everyday life or with himself, whereby each of the works conceals a Fiction of space. In the intimist works Picman uses a sketchpad and drawing for specifying certain impressions. Drawings were not made from recollection but spontaneously, in a given time and space. In order to analyze Picman's works more distinctly the drawings are divided into five groups. The first group comprises landscapes, drawings of nature, which do not necessarily show the architect's hand, but admittedly witness great drawing skills and a feeling for composition. In panoramas and landscapes Picman creates enlivening atmosphere and particularities of the surroundings. His interest for maritime or continental landscape almost always includes water in the foreground of the composition. Gaining insight into Picman's drawings raises the question of whether the works are remnants of the positivist understanding of architecture which he lived, or they are self-determined and isolated in the architect's inner self. It can also be questioned how much this sort of inspection of his innermost feelings helped or did damage to Picman in his own explorations. The intimacy of Picman's drawings is characterized by and accompanied with the anxiety of the age in which they were created in spite of the universal features of the visual medium. Picman's intimist interiors show a painterly feeling for colour: he adds watercolour to pencil making drawings transparent and nacreous. He used mixed media, most frequently watercolour, felt-tip pens and coloured pencils which contribute to the softness, transparency and expressivity of the drawings. In a series of phantasmagorical drawings Picman created his own cosmos by using technical elements, cross sections, details, herbs and the like in order to compose desolate spaces whose topography is reminiscent figuratively and literally to islands of unusual topography. It is exactly here that we need to leave the door slightly open for further research on one of the most powerful architectural personalities in 20(th) century Croatia.
