Painter, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor, born Miodrag Đurić on 4 October 1933 in Cetinje (Montenegro, then Yugoslavia), died on 27 November 2010 in Pontoise, based in France from 1956.
Life
Dado studied fine art in Herceg Novi from 1947 to 1951, then in Belgrade, in the class of Marko Čelebonović, who encouraged him to leave for Paris. He settled there in 1956 and worked in Gérard Patris’s lithography workshop, where he met Jean Dubuffet. Dubuffet introduced him to the dealer Daniel Cordier, who organised his first solo exhibition in 1958 and launched his career.
In 1960 he settled in a former mill at Hérouval, in the Vexin, which remained his home and workplace until his death. He was close to Bernard Réquichot, who died in 1961. In 1962, in New York, he met the Cuban artist Hessie, who became his wife. He was made a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 1984.
The work
A painter above all, in oil on canvas, Dado took up drypoint in 1966, then copper engraving with Alain Controu from 1967. His first sculpture, in 1962, was made of cattle bones; most of his sculpture dates from the 2000s. He also practised collage, digital from 1996, ceramics and fresco, which from the 1990s spread over walls and abandoned buildings.
His early canvases look towards Giorgio De Chirico, Carlo Carrà and the first Surrealists. He illustrated many books, including Georges Perec’s Alphabets (1976) and Kafka’s Le Terrier (1985), as well as texts by Barbey d’Aurevilly, Pierre Bettencourt and Claude Louis-Combet.
Exhibitions and collections
- Galerie Daniel Cordier, Paris, 1958
- Venice Biennale, 2009
- “Miodrag Dado Đurić” Gallery, National Museum of Montenegro, Cetinje, opened in 2012
- Retrospective, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau, 2018
- Collections: Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou; Bibliothèque nationale de France (prints)
- Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles: summer exhibition, 10 to 26 July 2025