tough in the beginning or not? At that time, many of our painters had already gone there, Lubarda, Milunović etc. Paris was a fad for artists. I remember that I ar- rived from Belgrade by train at the great rail- way and metro station Gare de Lyon. It was spring. In those early years everything was slightly impoverished in Paris for Bosa and I. We lived from my plastering, and what is that if not wall painting? And so I flailed around with a brush... I liked the smell of paint as I painted walls and large surfaces. It was not easy, but I knew I would endure. Did you face the vanity of other artists? I didn’t, everyone fought to survive as they knew how. In this struggle you form yourself. My first address there was offered to me by the painter Ristić. He stood in the attic when I came to his place with Bosa and surprised him with our arrival. How many studios left a mark on your canvases? First I painted in a partially demolished atelier outside Paris, then after a five-year stay I could afford my own studio. From shacks and sheds Kosa and I would sometimes make studios. I received many people and have never been lonely while I worked. It was im- portant for me to learn languages, to hear the opinions of others. Did you meet world famous painters in Paris? At one major exhibition I saw Pablo Pi- casso, a small man of huge talent. We didn’t meet, but I’ve remembered that day. Were there also difficult moments? A young man likes to make a noise, a lot bothers him and he tries a lot of things. He is tough everywhere and imposes himself. That’s also how I accepted the way I coped in Paris. The strong will for a different life than the one we’d left behind led us forward. I lived on a tight budget in a city that gave me the creative space of the famous and un- known. My wife and I were fortunate that we immediately found others who were simi- lar to us, and in the beginning we lived in a hotel on the avenue Saint-Germain-des- Prés and there we met most of the artists. After three months, I went to London and sold some of my paintings there. I was look- ing forward to returning to Paris, which is more picturesque than London. Paris has a great tradition, for artists and wild people. All that art and artists need is there. Are you a vain artist? I am, of course. I love trouble in the pro- cess of searching and creating, wandering. Have you destroyed some of your works? No. I’m patient to reach the goal even when it’s hard. When you paint a lot of pic- tures, you have a great array of attempts, and that’s also progress. There were pictures
wasn’t nervous, even though I had been an average student in primary and secondary school. I didn’t ask myself whether or not I would be a great painter. I loved painting a lot and that led me. Whatmemoriesdoyoucarryfromyour student days? I had the honour of learning from Pro- fessor Ivan Tabaković. He loved his students and gave them incentives for further devel- opment. He was a gentleman, intelligent, strict, witty, curious. It was magical for me to be close to him and to believe that per- haps even I, then an uneducated young man from the provinces, could be an artist. With me in class, among others, were Mića Popo- vić and Bata Mihailović. In the middle of the student year, I led all my classmates to see the sea for the first time in my birthplace of Sušak. We brought paints and brushes. We didn’t have any politicised lessons in mind, but they awaited us as such upon our return to Belgrade. Tabaković complained about us going and found a good model for us for practise, but he didn’t succeed in prevent- ing us from going. With your colleagues you made some kind of painting commune; out of re- bellion or as a challenge? We had no need for rebellion, just a de- sire to spend time by the sea. The locals wel- comed us, we looked to them like a strange, lively group of young men and woman. Af- ter that, we continued our journey to Za- dar, via Dubrovnik and Sarajevo, to Belgrade. During our studies they started blackmail- ing us because we dared to set up the Za- dar group and behave freely, so everyone from our class was thrown out of our stud- ies, except Mića Popović and his future wife, who was also a student. That was a major blow for you? I had the comfort of being a student with a model, with professors, and then I lost that. Each of us painted at home, we met at Dragoslav Mihajlović Mihiz’s place. Later we spontaneously founded the group of Eleven. Kosara Bokšan was first your class- mate, then your wife. Was that a dou- ble gain for both of you? We were young, 20-year-olds, full of am- bition, inspirations, passions ... Everything came together in our relationship, so it was easy to develop. And those were not easy times... We were not capable of being com- munists, nor of being socio-realistic painters for suitability. We strayed towards a different, more wild art. We renounced safe existences with a secure salary in the workplace. But we continued meeting and thus survived. Did you starve as an artist who didn’t accept the rules of the regime? I coped, so I was never hungry. You arrived in Paris in 1952. Was it
VOLIM DA SLIKAM ČOVEKA, NA NJEMU JE SVE Jednom ste rekli: „Svi su ljudi dobri za slikanje. Ne- važno je da li imaju veliki nos ili neku drugu karakte- ristiku. Čovek je za mene bitan.“ – Volim da slikam čoveka. Na njemu je sve. Svaki slikar zapravo ceo život slika jednu sliku, a život mu je ram. Ja bih se jednoj slici vraćao na doradu posle nekog vre- mena, a i nekoliko slika bih slikao istovremeno. Jedna slika može da odgovori na pitanje druge slike. I LIKE TO PAINT PEOPLE, EVERYTHING IS THERE You once said: “All people are good for painting. It’s un- important whether they have a big nose or some other prominent feature. The person is important for me.” I like to paint people. Everything is there. Every paint- er actually spends their entire life painting one picture, and their life is the frame. I would return to a painting for additions after a while, and I would also paint sever- al pictures simultaneously. One picture can answer the question of another picture.
competitions for children, so at the age of six I earned my first prize for a drawing, so I happily joke that I arrived in Belgrade as an acknowledgedpainter.Thankstomybrother Čedomir, who loved art, I visited the Prince Pavle Museum for the first time as a boy, and saw in it, like in a Little Louvre, an exhi- bition of Italian portraits through the ages. Did you think back then that your works would one day be in the set- tings of museums and galleries? Not at all. But when enrolling in stud- ies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade I
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