Painting

PAINTING

The painting has been among the most ancient and the most successful arts in Serbia-Montenegro. the beginning of painting had been the reproductions in wood of the religious icons, and the true wall paintings had developed in XII and XIII centuries in monasteries. “The White Angel” from the monastery of Milesevo and the cavaliers and the figures of princes from that of Resava have been among the jewels of this medieval art. In XIX century the painting had been reborn in Serbia thanks to the historical representations and to symbolism.

But in the XX century indeed the talents of international reputation had been flourishing and had constituted the Yugoslav School. If you were a painter amateur don’t miss the National Museum of Belgrade presenting a permanent exhibition of three centuries painting in Serbia, but also Renoir, Van Gogh and Picasso from the Slomovich collection. Still more significant has been the Modern Art Museum in Novi Beograd which will, in an arboreous park on the Danube bank, make you know the greatest ones from the Yugoslav School.

The Grand Figures of the Yugoslavian School

PAJA JOVANOVIC (1859-1957)

One of the pioneer painters of Serbian gender. As the historical context had been evolving rapidly he had been influenced by contemporary events. He had begun by the natural gender such as “The Bird Fight”, a surrealist picture bringing him an international recognition. But the portraits of aristocrats and his frescos taken from the national history especially made his brand. The most known has been “The Migration of Serbs under Arsenije III Carnojevic” representing the escape of Serbs before the Ottoman violence at the end of XVII century.

PETAR LUBARDA (1907-1974)

With Branko Filipovic, a Montenegrin painter had developed all his career in France. After the study of Beaux Arts in Paris he had obtained the “Grand Prix´1940. he had created the first painting school in Montenegro after the war, and since 1951 he had initiated two permanence exhibitions in Paris. Thereafter he used to teach the painting art in the greatest institutions.

His avant-garde works had very quickly distinguished him from those like him in the 1950s. His dream compositions had been mixing the expressionist themes and the post-modern pictures and has been plunging us into an entirely surrealist world. He did not hesitate to assemble the heterogeneous materials and the objects of everyday life. Petar Lubarda remained the master of an art wanting a synthesis between the painting and everything touching the representative art.

LJUBA POPOVIC (born 1934 in Tuzla)

One of the creators of the surrealist movement in Belgrade and the head of Serbian painters in Paris. After the study of beaux arts in Belgrade, Popovic had in 1960 created an avant-garde group named Mediala together with dome friends. At that time his aggrieved style mixing a quasi pointillist technique and the great rectangular surfaces had already been known. He had settled in Paris thereafter and had organized the exhibitions throughout the world.

Ljuba Popovic had put up an agitated painting mixing the female body, architecture and surrealist forms in the compositions of a rare colour intensity. Since then there appeared a taking into relation the longing and the death, of purity and chaos, of microcosm and macrocosm. The underneath and imminent forces have been ready to emerge at the limiting line giving to the motives a subversive architectural character, the world order has been merely apparent to Ljuba. He only required to be excited by the human tragedy. This painter constantly is making very frequent exhibitions in Paris.

VLADIMIR VELICKOVIC (born 1935 in Belgrade)

This Serbian painter has been the most known in the world. Since 1966 he has been living and working in Paris where he had been teaching at the School of Beaux Arts from 1983 to 2000. this had given him to be nominated Commander of Arts and Literature.

As a child he had known II World War II, its violence an its terror, and even he has been living in Paris since 1966, the death remained present in the works of this artist: the broken into pieces bodies, the dense smoke, the gallows lined to the infinite. The situations are tragic, brutal. The feature has been severe, aggressive. By his drawings with the charcoal, with a few colours being always red, maroon or black granted a particular interest. They make one to think about the tragic features of contemporary world.

Having made 200 personal exhibitions in his active and having received the invitations to international events, Vladimir Velickovic is the most talented and most renowned from this “Yugoslavian” school.

MILOS SOBAJIC (born 1945 in Belgrade)

The most fruitful Serbian painter. Not less than 1000 compositions making a part of the artists “Yugo” loving Paris. After learning in Belgrade, Sobajic settled in Paris.

A painter of a powerful expression, Milos Sobajic has been a true colourist he did not realize his composition in drawing like a Velickovic, but by the colours. He loves to use the strong colours in the great metallic surfaces. His pictures have for their themes also the scenes from everyday life like the running of cars, flight of a plane. The modern life in a hurry and its excitement have been also magnified.