"I am here on the planet, but elusive. I will appear again in two centuries", it is written on the door of the studio of the Serbian painter Milić Stanković, the famous Milić of Mačva.
An exhibition was organized in the Jevrem Grujić House Nebeski Milić on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of his birth. The exhibition presents the first 30 years of creativity of the Serbian painter. In addition to Milić's paintings, of which there are more than 60 at the exhibition, his personal items, photographs and drawings are also displayed. The author of the exhibition is Branka Conić, and the co-author is Andrea Milojević.
photo: miodrag Đorđević...
The title of the exhibition was derived from an anecdote according to which Milić, as a child, in his native Belotić, liked to spend time in the fields. He was splitting corn leaves and making holes in them. If the holey leaf were pointed towards the sky, the light from the sun, the density of the clouds and the blue of the sky would create various shapes on the leaf. That sheet was actually a canvas. As he wrote in his Historians, it was precisely this that led him to become a painter.
Art historian Anđela Filipović, who guides us through the exhibition, states that Milić of Mačva left a deep mark not only on Serbian painting, but throughout Europe and the world. He says that, according to some statistics, he painted about 12.000 works, and that, according to his own tradition, he had more than 100 exhibitions held in North America, in Brussels, Paris, Vienna and of course, in Serbia and the Balkans.
......Karločanka from the past,…
One of his first works was shown at the exhibition - Forest lamb - which he painted in the fourteenth year, as well as the work with which he applied for admission to the Academy of Fine Arts. Anđela Filipović says that the exhibition presents the process by which Milić reached surrealism, to the symbols by which he is recognizable.
He was born in 1934 in the village of Belotić near Mačva, which, according to Anđela Filipović, was extremely important for his childhood - as evidenced by the prefix "from Mačva" that he added to his name.
"For him, the sword was a stronghold of inspiration, it was a driving force, and all the experiences that marked his growing up will greatly influence his paintings," says our interlocutor.
In high school, he pronounced the "painter's oath" to himself in the mirror and said: "I must be a painter! I will be a painter and I will only live from painting!". And yet, after high school, in order to fulfill his parents' wishes, he enrolled in architecture, but secretly enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts as well.
"They wanted me to be a man with a bow, to do something that would bring benefits, and for them it was either a doctor or an engineer," said Milić.
......Leviathan tests on the Home for the Invalids
When his father found out about it, he disowned him publicly in "Glas Podrinja" and forbade him to come to Macva for the next four summers. Anđela Filipović says that Milić's separation from Mačva was extremely important for his creativity and that it resulted in a huge artistic production. Then, and it was in the fifties, his famous cycles were created - The Mačva suffering, Mačva portraits i Legends of Mačva.
He also explains that even this ban did not stop Milić from going to Macva, so he did it "during the winter months when there are the fewest people so that no one would see him." He would find cabins and cottages that were unlocked, enter them alone with his painting equipment. He survived thanks to the bits of bacon that the peasants would leave behind. Everything, in order to paint his Sword."
In 1959, Milić from Mačva had his first solo exhibition, where he exhibits Mačva portraits. According to our interlocutor, that exhibition was the ticket to return to Mačvo. However, reconciliation with his father was not easy. Milić decided to buy two oxen, and to appear at the gate with them in order to prove to his father that he can build a career from painting, that he can support his family.
In honor of their reconciliation, an outdoor exhibition was organized where the aforementioned portraits of the Macvani were displayed all over his yard, they were hung on the walls of the houses, on the stalls, so the Macvani could see themselves and their environment through the eyes of artists.
The co-author of the exhibition, art historian Andrea Milojević says that Milić od Mačva is one of the few painters whose work is not characterized by universality, but by the return and use of national motifs, national history, ethnic motifs, folklore motifs, homelands. "The topics are always of national origin, or they are related to Macva, or they are biographical, or they are all mixed up," he points out.
Around 1970, Milić stopped painting less or even completely on canvas, which until then was his main material for work, and started to create on a wooden substrate, where he experimented with colors that would suit such a substrate.
When it comes to the reasons why the Jevrem Grujić House chose to show Milić of Mačva, Andrea Milojević reminds us of the "Greats of Serbian Painting" project, which they have been working on since its opening in 2015, which aims to discover the suppressed and forgotten greats of Serbian art.
"Certainly one of the most recent and closest to us in terms of time is Milić of Mačva", she says and adds that Milić "is quite neglected in the history of art. After his death, there were only a few posthumous exhibitions, and today very few art historians deal with his extremely rich oeuvre".
Explaining the criteria by which the works for the exhibition were chosen, our interlocutor states that Jevrem Grujić's Home is a family museum, so they wanted the exhibition itself to be oriented towards his family, especially since it houses the largest number of Milić's works.
"We chose the works in cooperation with his daughters, in order to show the first years of the artist's creation, starting from the end of the 50s and ending in the middle and end of the 70s, in order to go through all his phases - yellow, red, blue phase, painting on on a wooden base, on canvases, from the university style to the style that is recognizable to us today, as well as to the famous logs that are, in fact, the most sought after at our exhibition", says Milojević.
She reminds that the House of Jevrem Grujić has an interesting tradition of women passing on the history of the house of the Grujić family itself, because until the last generation only women were heirs, and she discussed with the director of the museum Branka Conić that this exhibition should also be dedicated to his wives and his daughters who ran it. throughout his life, were his inspiration, but also the other guardians of his legacy.
