Anton Zoran Music was born in 1909 in Gorizia, a town then within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and today on the Italian border with Slovenia. He studied in Zagreb, and spent the years 1934-35 travelling. In 1943 Music moved to Venice, where he was subsequently arrested and tortured by the Gestapo on the basis of his known political sympathies and suspicions that his artistic activities were a cover for espionage. He exhibited extensively throughout the post-war period, dividing his time between Paris and Venice. He was awarded the Prix de Paris in 1951, the Venice Biennial Art Graphic Prize in 1956, and the UNESCO Prize in 1960. Music continued to paint unpopulated landscapes in dry, muted tones, in addition to a number of cathedral interiors, and a late series of moving and introspective self-portraits.