Bogoljub Ivković
born in 1924, Gradskо, Yugoslavia (today North Macedonia), lives in Skopje
Blue painting, 1979
oil on canvas
MoCA Skopje
The Serbian painter Bogoljub Ivković was born in Gradsko, near Veles. He graduated from the School of Applied Arts in Skopje in 1953 and specialized in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 1957. His paintings, which are characterized by surrealist, post-cubist, and expressionist traits, often depict rural settings inspired by folklore and usually have a curved horizon line. Bogoljub Ivković’s monumental, geometric figures express the difficult life and the burden carried by Macedonian peasants. The painting (circa 1966) is representative of his early Parisian period. During his decade in Paris, between 1965 and 1974, he developed and perfected his original, idiosyncratic artistic style, which exists in the realm of the fantastic and the poetic. This small-format painting depicts a human figure against a black-brown background. The figure’s arms are positioned diagonally, as if mid-flight, and the entire body is reduced to basic geometric shapes.