"Autobiographic"

The Belgrade Museum of Applied Arts in October organised a retrospective exhibition of Dušan Petričić’s illustrations and caricatures entitled "Autobiographic". The exhibition displayed the works of Serbia’s best illustrator, now a Serb-Canadian author, created and published in the course of four last decades.

By Vesna Knežević Baletić

"Many young people have grown up since I left Belgrade in 1991 and my impression is that they are ignorant of my former and present work. I would like to present them my work, to present myself and some other people I used to work with, first of all Duško Radović. I wish his spirit were more felt in today’s Belgrade.", says Dušan Petričić on the occasion of his retrospective exhibition of illustrations and caricatures entitled "Autobiographic" and held October 2, 26, 2008, at the Museum of Applied Arts in Belgrade.

The exhibition "Autobiographic" is a survey of works by the Serb-Canadian caricaturists and illustrator Dušan Petričić (b.1946) created from 1966, when Petričić began working, to this year’s works published in Toronto Star, which brings Petričić’s regular column Dušan’s World. During these four decades Petričić has published his works in numerous Serbian, Canadian and American dailies and weeklies and has illustrated 33 books for children and adults alike.

Until 1991, while still in Belgrade, Petričić published in many magazines and newspapers – Književne Novine, Vidici, Poletarac, Kekec, Večernje Novosti, NIN… From that period alone, there are unforgettable works, such as his illustration of Ljubivoje Ršumović’s book We Miss Only Dragons, Duško Radović’s Let’s Sit Down and Talk, illustrations for the book Gulliver Among the Lilliputians and the animated cast and credit to the legendary children’s TV series, Poletarac (Fledgling), Stočiću Postavi Se (Table Set Itself) and Razbarušena Azbuka (Messed Up Alphabet), drawings he did for animated films, and posters he created for the national air company – JAT.

From the Canadian period, the exhibition displays caricatures and illustrations he did for The New York Times Book Review, Toronto Star and Scientific American, as well as illustrations for children’s books for which Petričić has received many awards in Canada.

"A caricaturist, illustrator, designer, animator and portraitist, Dušan Petričić is above all a humorist who still attracts us with his specific sense of a witty approach to topics he tackles”, says Slobodan Jovanovicć, the exhibition curator." His opus from the Belgrade period became the basis for later Serbian illustrations of children’s books, for caricatures with universal themes and the humoristic graphic solutions for advertising material (animated booklets, posters, calendars…) Having moved to Toronto, Petričić became one of the leading caricaturists and illustrators of children’s books in Canada and the USA. At the exhibition "Autobiographic" in the Museum of Applied Arts in Belgrade we can for the first time compare these two parts of his prolific opus," - says Jovanović.

Art historian Dragica Jovanović points to the key difference regarding the look of Petričić’s figures from the Belgrade and Canadian periods. "Petričić’s Canadian ‘functioning’ is evident in the change of his figures’ soft, round forms (soft Balkan’s relations) which are replaced with sharp, pointy forms (sharp North America’s relations). His Belgrade’s long-nosed and ‘moustached’ man, as an iconographic unit for an unlimited number of combinations, vanished forever from his work. Having realised that his moustached long-nosed man doesn’t fit in the new environment, he created a new angular and pointy North-American figure both in caricatures and illustrations", says Dragica Jovanović.

On the occasion of "Autobiographic", a retrospective exhibition that by definition is at the same time an acknowledgment and homage to artist, Dušan Petričić for New Review says: "Naturally, it is a fine sentiment and it is emotional to exhibit in Belgrade. The last time I exhibited in Belgrade was in 1997 at the Gallery Grafički Kolektiv, where I had an exhibition in 1978. I don’t like to have much to do with emotions because emotions always lead to a wrong side, but it is true that I am very emotional about this exhibition, as I always am whenever I visit Belgrade and I wish that this 15-year pause between me and Belgrade doesn’t exist. I have worked a lot since I left, but it still l ooks to me that these years someone has stolen from me."

Within the mid-October exhibition "Autobiographic", the Museum of Applied Arts also organised a promotion of the book Emma and a Disappearing Hedgehog by David Albahari, illustrated by Dušan Petričić and published by the Publishing House Zepter Book World.