Page 44 - Studio International - May 1965

Vladimir Velickovic man as victim

1
2 by Charles S. Spencer
The name Velickovic will mean almost nothing to
English-speaking readers, so a few details about this
gifted young Yugoslav painter are necessary. He was
born in Belgrade in 1935 and in 1960 graduated from
the University of Belgrade with a degree in architecture.
The following year he was awarded an important local
prize for town planning. He is a self-taught painter­
or rather a born one. Velickovic is one of those artists
who seem to have been born with a pencil in their
hands; since early childhood he has drawn and
developed a remarkable virtuosity. He first exhibited
in Belgrade at the tender age of 15. in the 1951
exhibition of Young Serbian Artists. In addition to
innumerable local exhibitions, his work has been seen
at the Biennale de Paris, in Venice, at the Sao Paulo
Biennale and last year in the mixed Summer Exhibition
at the Grosvenor Gallery, London. In 1962 he studied
with the distinguished Yugoslav painter Krsto
Hegedusic in Belgrade for two years, an important
formative period in his career. His first one-man show
took place in Belgrade in 1963, and the following year
he held exhibitions in Ljubliana and Skopje. He has
won a number of important prizes in Yugoslavia and
recently completed a period of study in Brussels, under
an international scholarship, where in February he
held an exhibition of drawings at Galleries Defacqz.
This is quite a success story for so young an artist,
working in a relatively obscure part of Europe. Obscure
though it may be, Yugoslav, in the artistic sense, is far
from provincial, as the two post-war exhibitions of
Yugoslav art at the Tat-e Gallery have proved.
Given its geographic position and history, it is not at
all surprising that modern Yugoslav art should reveal
the impact of expressionism and surrealism. The
influence of Austro-Hungarian and German art of the
early part of the century is marked, but the lighter,
more delicate infiltration of French modes has not
been negligible. More interesting to analyse, but
requiring more knowledge and space than I possess,
are the similarities between the gothic elements in
much Yugoslav painting and the brute-fantasies of
Flemish art, or the imagery of such painters as Lucebert
in Holland or Asger Jorn from Denmark.
Velickovic told me that in teaching himself to draw
and paint he spent years copying Rembrandt, Goya,
Durer and Daumier-powerful masters I In his work one
is impressed by violent movement, hallucinatory
nightmare images, a nervous power of form, sanguine
involvement, an uninhibited determination to face
up to cruelty-in total a vision of man-made hell. One
is reminded of the detailed underworld of Bosch. of
Goya·s self-infliction-and among contemporary artists
of Francis Bacon. But Bacon is describing a personal
hell self-made or imposed; of himself, for himself,
claustrophobic. It is, whilst frightening, in the long run
not involving or moving. It is too self-pitying for
tragedy. One feels like saying 'pull yourself together',
something one would never dare say to a great tragic
artist like Rembrandt or Beethoven, or a tragic hero in a
1
Vladimir Velickovic Greek play or Shakespeare, because they are bound up
Deta,i 1963
Oil Tempera in events and situations beyond human control. Goya
has this quality since he is judging the world, mankind,
2
Figure 1962 not his insignificant self.-
Velickovic is not a moralist on this scale, but for so
3
Unknown 1964 young an artist he has gone a long way in creating a
Oil Tempera
personal world in which revulsion and compassion
4 dwell together as potent images of man's dilemma.
Dog 1963 His drawings have a quality I can best describe as
Oil Tempera
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