As a curator who for years followed and wrote critical reviews of greats such as Emil Schumacher and Max Beckmann, I have followed the development of the young and promising painter Antonio Hase with particular interest.

He belongs to that elite group with a vision for advancing postmodern art and deconstructivism. Having closely followed his many years of work across different directions, it was this deconstructivism that won me over – and I state with full conviction that Antonio Hase is among the most significant painters of postmodernism.

His canvases are a dialogue between matter and soul, and they place him at the very top of contemporary painting.

When, in the mid-seventies, criticism of the dominance of modern art – with its drive towards ever greater reduction and minimalism – grew louder, architects were the first to speak. They condemned stereotyped architecture that celebrated the purity of concrete and ignored detail entirely. The era of postmodernism began, an age of conscious recycling and the spiral (so-called circular) economy. Visual artists, gallerists and critics joined them, the loudest among them Bonito Oliva, who announced the new age of the transavantgarde.

In the eighties, when Antonio Hase entered the art scene with his painting, space was opening up for new painting, a new freedom of expression and pluralism – but also for the pre- and post-millennial chaos, or deconstructivism, that still prevails today. The media were then abuzz with chaos as a state of the universe established by science: a universe not ruled by perfect order, as had been believed, but one in which chaos plays an important part in existence.

Antonio Hase's painting looks towards the universe, that enchanted space in which we exist and through which we sail on our planet along a fixed path. We are enchanted by this journey we will never fully understand. His paintings are non-figurative, full of feeling and lived experience. As personal as they are in their choice of colours and strokes, and in pictorial structures that shift with his moods, they are just as universal and metaphysical. They narrate nothing and strive for no symbols; they act directly on our senses.

In this silent communication of visual language we share with the artist a flash of the personal experience he expressed in the painting, even though every viewer sees what they wish to see. The beauty and value of these works lie in the fact that the artist suggests nothing more than what we are ready to receive through looking at colours and forms, through the variety of the constellations he creates and the strong vibrations the paintings emanate.

Antonio Hase names three great figures who shaped his commitment to Informel. First Vlado Kristl, to whom he was very close; then Emil Schumacher, who, incidentally, thanks to his son Ulrich received a magnificent museum in Hagen; and the Croatian-Czech architect Vlado Milunić, who brought postmodern deconstruction into his architecture. The temperamental Antonio Hase developed this postmodern, new-millennium deconstructivism into an original and authentic handwriting, with which he has created exciting and rapturous paintings for four decades.

In this small retrospective we can sense the artist's reflective impulse and share with him honest and poetic experiences of an enchanted universe. Antonio Hase's colours are fiery, bursting, bright, pure and luminous; his stroke is sweeping and lavish, and behind every painting lies a hidden thought of the author. Yet, like all painters of Informel, Antonio Hase does not let us come too close. His painting is enigmatic. In the universality of colour, form, rhythm and freedom of expression, the artist poses unobtrusive questions to the viewer without seeking answers, and simply leaves them – the pleasure of looking.

For decades Antonio Hase has proved himself a dynamic and very serious Croatian and German artist, living and working between Munich and Zagreb. His painting breathes the abstraction he committed to from his first cycles in the mid-1980s, largely thanks to his acquaintance and neighbourship with the Croatian-German artist Vlado Kristl, who introduced him to the enchanted world of abstraction. He went on to meet other German artists such as Emil Schumacher, with whom he became friends, and so began the artistic expression that continues to this day.

Over the past decades he has completed some ten successful smaller exhibition cycles, refining his abstract expression and proving his authenticity on the demanding German market. Step by step he mastered every form of abstraction, from abstract expressionism to geometric abstraction, searching for his own deconstructive forms and questioning the universe he discovered in the art and buildings of the renowned Croatian Vlado Milunić, all the way to new movements and deconstructivism.

Vlado Milunić, who worked in the Czech Republic as an architect and professor of architecture, is considered one of the leaders of deconstructivism in architecture, which he developed in close collaboration with the Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry and the British architects Richard Rogers and Norman Robert Foster. Besides Emil Schumacher, Hase was influenced by Otto Piene, Georges Mathieu, Sam Francis, the Croatian sculptor Stanko Jančić and the Croatian-Canadian artist Miljenko Horvat.

In his early years Antonio Hase painted the landscapes of his homeland – rivers, waterfalls, springs, streams, fields, meadows and marshes – which remained essential themes even after he moved into the world of postmodern abstraction.

The painter approaches the theme of the universe with restraint and care, as he does everything said and scientifically explained about it, and phenomena such as masses of melting ice. "The Enchanted Universe" is a special destination for him, where memories appear, heavenly and earthly reality meet, and life unfolds and renews itself as a blossoming, fluttering world of celestial bodies. All this is expressed powerfully in his paintings of pure colour, which the public receives well.

The exhibition at the ORIS House of Architecture will show selected works from earlier cycles and some ten new works of deconstructivism.

It is a great pleasure for us that the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina receives from the artist Antonio Hase a painting of the state flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina in abstraction, entitled "Jedina" ("The Only One").

The artist had previously created the state flag of the Republic of Croatia, entitled "Voljena" ("The Beloved"). Antonio Hase's life path is truly inspiring. He left our region for the West with the aim of succeeding, and he did. His road was thorny and hard, but that did not stop him from searching for his own expression.

During his artistic maturing in Munich he met Emil Schumacher and Vlado Kristl, and in Hamburg he met Gerhard Richter.

Friendship is a priceless treasure, and Mr Antonio Hase's gesture confirms it. By donating his work to the Art Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina he has not only enriched our collection but also left a lasting mark on our institution. For this we can say one big thank you to Antonio.

We send him our warmest and endless thanks. The painting is in the National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

On 27 March, as part of a rich cultural programme, the morning began with the donation of the painting "Vukovar Water Tower", an abstract work by the well-known Croatian-German artist Antonio Hase. It is a large painting, 210 × 175 cm, that convincingly depicts the Water Tower as the landmark symbol of Vukovar.

Hubertus Froning wrote a few lines in the leaflet printed for the donation, noting that over the past decades Antonio Hase has stood out among many artists as a leader of deconstructivism in painting, of which he is a pioneer in Europe and the world.

The Vukovar City Museum thanks the artist for the donated work, which will enrich the holdings of the collection "Museum of Vukovar in Exile".