Serbian Art Brut draughtsman, born in 1932 in Veliki Radobilj, near Bitola (Macedonia), died in 2003.
Life
The son of an Orthodox priest from Montenegro, he grew up in a very religious and strict household. Around 1935 the family moved to Despotovac, a small town in central Serbia. Before he was eight he lost his elder sister and younger brother, carried off by diphtheria and scarlet fever; on his father’s death he lived with his mother in great poverty, on her pension alone. As a child he watched his father conduct the funerals of the dead brought to the church. At eight he drew a Portrait of the Mother; as a teenager he earned a little money by making portraits of the deceased for their families.
At around twenty, in 1952, he left for Belgrade to study drawing and sculpture, but the school served mainly as a shelter for the night. He frequented studios and tried to exhibit, without success: a provincial artist, untrained and penniless, he found the doors closed. After about five years he went back to live with his mother, and later married.
The work
He drew in ballpoint pen, gouache, ordinary pencils and wax crayons. From 1970 he made large formats, including scrolls more than fifty metres long. His very dense compositions are peopled with insects, embryonic figures and human beings.
Exhibitions and collections
- 1979: solo exhibition, Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne (13 June to 16 September)
- Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne: notably Les effrayants insectes cornus (1970) and Svetogrde II (Sacrilège II) (2002)