Vladimir Veličković: Vision of seeing the invisible

ARTE gallery had an extremely successful and productive collaboration with the artist Vladimir Veličković, and in 2021, two years after his death, it presented a selection of the world-class artist's graphic work, which was realized in his multi-decade fruitful artistic career through various creative media.

The exhibition catalog offers us a broader picture of the author's artistic activities spanning forty years, and among the published graphics, a special place is occupied by a series of 16 graphics that represent the illustrations for the 2003 editions of the book "Altenburg Nuts" by the French author André Malraux.

"Vladimir Veličković's creativity emphasizes compactness, fidelity to the thematic framework, the artist's ability to be a chronicler of time, a reminder, but also a harsh realist who is uncompromisingly engaged in both artistic and social fields, overcoming barriers in addition to his vocation.

In his decades-long creative work, Veličković's graphic prints are imbued with recognizable motifs: motifs of decapitated walkers, jumpers, ravens, rats, childbirth, boxes, Vesalius' anatomy, falls, corpses, tortured bodies, wire fences, gallows, fires, incinerators, desolate landscapes interwoven with nothingness and by fear. Through a clear and precise stroke, they remain engraved in our minds, so even when we try to get rid of them, they still remain present, just like their creator himself,'' writes art historian Drago Rakočević.