Naive Art in Serbia - SANU-a

Naive Art in Serbia
The birth of modern art was not a
precondition for the appearance of
naive art but, through its antiacademism, it helped the acceptance
and approbation of naive art.
However, even in Serbia this art has
been accompanied with many
questions and dilemmas from the
very beginning and they ranged from
divisions in terminology… to essential
definitions. All this can be debated,
but naive art can by no means be
Ferenc Kalmar, Fire Bird, 1998
denied its freshness and originality.
Naive art has its own aesthetic existence and spiritual role…
Spontaneity and directness of artistic expression, genre-scenes and portraits of
everyday life of certain surroundings - works in the field, sowing, harvests,
plowing, holidays, legends, customs, tradition…
It is sometimes a connection with the past, the influence of
Moravska school way of building… With others it is the
multitude of details with meticulous and plain treatment of
vertical and horizontal surfaces that makes dramatic and
expressive pictures…
The first naive sculptors in Serbia started to emerge
simultaneously with the appearance of naive painting.
However, only by the end of the sixth and the beginning of
the seventh decade of the last century did the sculpture
undergo its ascent. Besides the abundance of themes and
the diversity of the modelled materials (wood, stone, clay,
ceramics) the naive sculpture in Serbia is also characterized
by an inclination to symbolism and fantasy.
The most frequently used material is wood, usually of its
natural colour, black coating or colorfully painted, its natural
characteristics, holes or knots being left in the modelling
process.
Milan Stanisavljević,
1996
According to their abilities and affinities the sculptors who
work with wood express their ideas through a relief, usually a totemic
composition and a full sculpture, while those who work with stone and ceramics
almost exclusivelly express their ideas through a full sculpture.
The monumental sculptures of our naive artists have attracted attention of the
most eminent experts for decades. That´s why the works of our sculptors such
as: Bogosav Zivkovic, Dragutin Aleksic, Dragisa and Milan Stanisavljevic, Ilija
Filipovic... are displayed in the most famous museums and galleries all over the
world.
However, the richest collection of the mentioned works is in the possession of
the Museum of Naive Art in Jagodina…
SAVA SEKULIĆ
He was born in the village of Bilisani in Dalmatian
Zagora in Croatia on 14th February 1902. He didn´t
attend any schools. His father taught him how to
read and write. He lost his father at the age of ten.
In the year 1917 he got wounded at the Italian
front and he lost his right eye which resulted in his
being demobilized. After the war he worked in
various places of Yugoslav kingdom as a day
Sava Sekulić, Girl on the Beach,
laborer, servant, woodcutter, bricklayer, boatman,
1975
factory worker. Since 1943 he had lived in Belgrade
where he worked as a bricklayer.
According to the artist´s sayings he started writing poems on the eve of the
Second World War and, in order to make his poetic expression visible, he started
painting. That´s why his paintings often have some verses at the back, which
makes it easier to understand the meaning and the content of the picture. After
the retirement in 1962 he completely devoted his life to art - painting and
poetry. His work was exhibited in 1964 for the first time. He had the first oneman show in 1969. He died in Belgrade on January 26th, 1989.
ILIJA BAŠIĆEVIĆ BOSILJ
He was born in Šid in 1895 and died there in
1972. He was a farmer by vocation, but started
painting in 1957.
In his paintings he managed to achieve the
unity of an archaic and a modern sensibility, as
well as of open and abstract colorization…
Inspired by folk poems and tales, he painted
legendary creatures and animals in a surreal
space.
The pictorial values of his paintings hold
connotations of the achievements of the
pioneers of modernism in art: Klee, Miró,
Kandinsky, Dubuffet …
Ilija Bosilj, 1967
He had one-man shows in Belgrade, Zagreb,
Genoa, Frankfurt am Main, Munich, Basel,
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Dusseldorf, Dubrovnik, Amsterdam, Novi Sad, Jagodina, …
He bestowed his works, as well as his collection of works of naive artists, to his
native town Šid, where The Gallery of Naive Art Ilijanum was opened in 1973.
His works from the collections of the Museum of Naive Art in Jagodina and from
the Gallery Ilijanum were exhibited at the 6th international triennial in Bratislava
(IN SITA 2000) and they were presented in the section of the retrospection of
the most important achievements of naive art in the world in the 20th century.
BOGOSAV ŽIVKOVIĆ
a sculptor and a painter
He was born in the village of Leskovac in 1920. He´s been
doing sculpture since 1957.
A review of his work
A dream world twisting magnificently, weaved out of
fantastic visions in an uninterrupted frieze
… Bogosav hovers around one premordial image in all his
work. That´s an indestructible chain of life in which things
and creatures appear and disappear, give birth to one
another and devour…
The world is a whole - creatures and things are just the
expressive forms of that omnifarious One…
(Oto Bihalji Merin in the catalogue from the exhibition of
Bogosav Zivkovic´s works in the Gallery of Primitive Art in
Zagreb in October 1962)
Using the technique of relief and azure engraving and
through totemic composing he converts deep layers of his
dreams and imagination into vertical compositions where
every single figure is the beginning of the next one.
An accentuated narrative in the form of a frieze or a web of
figures which wraps up a tree, as well as softly rounded
lines of his forms, point to peculiar sensuality.
Bogosav Živković,
My Home, 1963
Like in Indian totems, Bogosav wraps his trees up with creatures known only to
himself, created in the moment of uniting the artist´s love for wood and his wish
to breathe his own spirit into it…
He has had one-man shows in Belgrade, Novi Sad, Jagodina, Zagreb, Edinburgh,
Vienna, Paris, Bratislava, Warsaw, Brussels, Stockholm, Munich, Amsterdam,
Mexico, California, South America …
The greatest collection of Bogosav Zivkovic´s works is in the possession of the
Museum of Naive Art in Jagodina.
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EMERIK FEJEŠ
He was born to a Hungarian family in Osijek on
November 3rd 1904. Five years later he moved
with his parents to Novi Sad where he learned the
craft of making buttons and combs from his father
(in 1921). Between the two world wars he worked
as a buttoner, antiquarian, combmaker, sales
assistant and sawer in various towns of the former
Yugoslavia. During the Second World War he lived
in exile in Pesta and Nagyvarad (in Hungary) and
in 1945 he returned to Novi Sad where he stayed
till the end of his life.
In 1949 he started painting, and since he was
retired in 1952 due to his bad health he
completely devoted his life to art. His work was
exhibited for the first time in 1955 and he had his
Emerik Feješ, Notre Dame, 1962
first one-man show in 1956. A true autodidact, he
painted instinctively without any profounder artistic knowledge and experience.
He died in Novi Sad on July 9th, 1969.
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