|
A half century has elapsed from the first exhibition of Vojislav Vojo Stanić (b. 1924, Podgorica), held in 1958 in Belgrade, to the one that that adorned the walls of the RTS Gallery from May 13th to June 30th, 2008. During these 50 years, the artist has produced a grandiose opus extending his artistic world vertically, but always holding a certain recognizable constant – his specific handwriting. The Mediterranean ambience and the contents are based on the joy of life that endures on his canvases for years in the form of unchanging beauty.
Since the time that he painted his first oil canvas in 1954, Vojo Stanić has been exhibiting in many cities of the former Yugoslavia, as well as abroad in Paris, New York, Zurich, Stockholm, Alexandria, Oslo, Rome, Berlin, Monaco, Moscow… He holds numerous awards and acknowledgments. He has been a member of the Association of Fine Artists of Montenegro since 1952, the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Montenegrin Matica and the Montenegrin PEN Club since 1985, and the Duklja Academy of Sciences and Arts since 1999. He took part in the 1997 Venice Biennale, representing Montenegro.
Aside from institutions, Vojo Stanić's words can be found in many private collections; about 30 paintings created from 1965 to 2000 — owned by the Vujoševic, Milić, Pavlović, Petković and Todorović families — were presented in the RTS Gallery. The curator of the exhibition and creator of the catalogue is art historian Natalija Cerović.
Before acquiring fame, Vojo Stanić studied and graduated sculpture from the Belgrade Academy of Fine Arts under professor Lojze Dolinar. Though he has been drawing and painting from the time that, in his own words, "I could hold a pencil into my hand", he chose to study sculpture somewhat unexpectedly, by chance really. When he came to the Academy he was fascinated by an "anatomical figure". "I thought – well, this is something", Stanić said to D. Adamović, in 1973, in the famous poll carried out by the Politika Daily, entitled Who has crucially influenced you and how?
- I didn't even know that it was not a sculpture, but was a sort of teaching aid, a figure used to study the anatomical structure of the human body. I liked it very much. Even though I had come to study painting, I went on to study sculpture. And mind you, I have been painting since I was born. I copied old antique embroidery, pictures from books and newspapers, I drew whatever I saw and knew. For me, it was never just a game. I did it most passionately, more passionately than anything I did at school, and in fact, more passionately than anything I did outside of school as well. And I can say that I chose painting very early in my life, and it seems to me that I have always known that I will be a painter.
Thus, after doing sculpture, the genuine gift for painting that Vojo Stanić carried deeply in his artistic soul began to surface. Nothing could have changed his destiny. For Stanić, painting has become life and life has become painting.
He settled in Herceg Novi and began to build his visual world. He painted what he saw before him at the seaside, the windows of houses around him, the seashore gardens, squares, parks … Certain that there were more than enough subject to paint, he left Herceg Novi only when really necessary "Whenever I begin painting, I always see the sea", he said in one interview.
Stanić frequently enriches His maritime "visual stories" with oneiric sights, actually with surreal visions where everything is possible: a head flying without a body, pianists playing amidst mountains, a bather with an opened head instead of a skull, so that instead of a brain one sees emptiness, or a huge bottle that serves as a pillar of a bridge. One can search in vain for influences of Brueghel, Bosh, De Chirico, Magritte or Escher. In comparisons to other artists, Vojo Stanić proves to be an original and remains on his own side. He has never followed something so banal as fashion in fine art.
On the occasion of his 1988 exhibition in the SASA Gallery, he said:
- I thought that if I began following a certain trend, by the time I mastered it enough to be able to produce something creative and my own, yet sticking to the form, this fashion would be over and someone, somewhere, would proclaim new rules. It made no sense, I thought, and therefore I did things on my own terms.
In his own terms, the artist has succeeded in preserving his childish sincerity in his first drawings, but also to express complex content connected with magic beauty and harmony. With particular skill he manages to use one canvass to express parallel actions occurring both in the interior and exterior of maritime building. He has the ability to write his 'visual notes' on a canvass and achieve a harmonious 'architecture' of composition. All these contribute to Vojo Stanić's everlasting charm of painting. It is a magic that Stanić's work ever attractive and intimate.
|
The Mediterranean lyricism
"Stanić's paintings, though perhaps simple and easily understood at first glance, are characterized by the enigma and mystery of the unconceivable," wrote Natalija Cerović in the exhibition catalogue. "However, Mediterranean lyricism prevails on them and it is what basically makes his paintings accessible with such joy."
| | 
