Petar Omčikus: Creative Spiral

The monographic study published by ARTE Media entitled "Petar Omčikus - The Creative Spiral" was created in 2021, and was accompanied by an extensive exhibition in our galleries. Nine years have passed since the last major exhibition of Petr Omčikus, as well as two years since his death. Many reviews of Omčikus's art were given during his lifetime by leading critics and artists, and through several retrospective exhibitions it was possible to get acquainted with the monumental and very diverse oeuvre of this artist, which was created during more than seven decades in the triangle Paris-Korčula- Belgrade.

The new publication is mostly based on works from private collections that the public has, although the most significant works by Omčikus from museum collections, both from our country and abroad, are displayed within it. Our intention is to offer a new reading of the works of Petr Omčikus - through a typological presentation of the dominant themes of his oeuvre, and the uniqueness of the plastic means of their articulation. On this occasion, we want to determine the intersection points of his creative spiral, its "threads", as ideological and linguistic tectonic "pillars", i.e. the verticals around which Petr Omčikus' work revolved and his rich and robust poetics, so unique that it still stubbornly resists any attempt at classification in a Sisyphean manner.

It has been rightly emphasized more than once that the work of Petar Omčikus can be identified with his fate, with non-conformity. First, the "Zadar episode" of the students of Tabaković's class, then the group of Eleven, the trip to Paris in 1952 and the refusal to enter the established gallery system and submit to its legalities - these are some of his numerous disobediences.

In his evaluations of his - almost eight decades long artistic creation - Omčikus himself often and spontaneously returned to two positions, which, according to the frequency of appearing in numerous conversations, seemed to be the most important for him: "All my life I paint only one picture," he said, adding at the same time that he noticed that his work "happens in the form of a spiral. In each thread I encounter the problems of the previous one. If my first thread was a man-bug, I paint a tree in bloom at the same time. This flowering tree grows in the next thread into a coastal rockery. Then come the black boxers...".

The monograph "Petar Omčikus - The Creative Spiral" published by Arta Media won the Grand Prize of ULUPUDS at the 53rd May Exhibition in 2021.