Josip Vaništa and his artistic thought“ This final work touches on the life and works of one of the most important contemporary Croatian artists, Josip Vaništa. Considering over sixty years of artistic creation, Vaništa's oeuvre is diverse and the work is arranged after his artistic phases. In the first chapter we give an overview of Vaništa's life and put it in a time context, and in the second chapter we touch on his non-Gorgon oeuvre, which includes surrealist paintings within his first exhibition and then his illustrations and abstract tendencies of creation. Then, in the third chapter, an overview of the most important works within the group "Gorgona" is given, which includes anti-magazines, thoughts for the month, photocompensation, ready-made objects Gorgonian Black and Infinite Rod/In honor of Manet and a painting Description. The last chapter describes his post-Gorgon work, the return to traditional painting, Laying action and the magazines Postgorgona and P.S. – Post Scriptum. The aim of the work is to describe and present the main points of his entire life's oeuvre in order to better understand his artistic thought.