Homage to Vladimir Veličković

The publication „Homage to Vladimir Veličković“, along with which an exhibition of paintings and drawings was organized, was organized on the occasion of marking one year since the death of the author. Our cooperation with Vladimir Veličković began in 2007, and the first official joint venture was realized a year later. It was an exhibition of drawings and bronze sculptures - which was the first time that the author presented his sculptural works to the Belgrade audience. Each subsequent meeting was a special experience. Each segment of the conversation had a clear form, rich content and tended to search for the essence. After more than a decade of fruitful and intimate collaboration, a deep feeling and understanding for his work developed. Thus, our team singled out the most representative paintings and drawings from the prestigious Belgrade collections that form the backbone for an essential insight into the essence of his artistic thinking and presented them at the mentioned exhibition, and in their entirety within the framework of this publication. These are works created during the 1960s and 1970s, which provide an opportunity to view a crucial segment of the oeuvre of this great creator and thinker.

Veličković's painting is unique and authentic in its coherence, consistent in its motifs and firm in its typography. Through the magnificent and the terrible, it shows and documents the chaotic human destinies and the tragedy of the present moment. In order to fight for the position and status he has now, Veličković had to use his own strength and inventiveness to overcome limitations and skilfully avoid falling into the trap of commonplaces both in the narrative and in the iconography itself. With his energy and emphasized expressiveness, he manages to build an artistic-linguistic model composed of anthropomorphisms and strong scenery, either in the form of a landscape or an environment in which he places the actors of his own observations and predictions.

"Those ontological scenes were repeated, from decade to decade, but they were never molded. Another and different view constantly emerged from them, and this was a great pledge of movement with the spirit of the times, a sign of discerning the speech and desire of the epoch through the discourse and catharsis of reality and realism that never were. And yet - they were always focused on existential issues of life and death, they touched on the feeling of danger, the certainty of dying, and finally death itself as a great catalyst. And the world always recognized the reasons for those cataclysmic scenes, as within pragmatic environment, as well as in each individual..." states one of the authors of the contribution within this publication, prominent art theoretician, professor Irina Subotić.