Milet Andrejević (28 September 1925 – 21 October 1989) was a Yugoslav-born American painter in the realist tradition. A classically trained artist who went through a series of different artistic periods, including

post-Impressionism Post-Impressionism (also spelled Postimpressionism) was a predominantly French art movement that developed roughly between 1886 and 1905, from the last Impressionist exhibition to the birth of Fauvism. Post-Impressionism emerged as a reaction a ...

, Expressionism, and Pop Art, Andrejević was best known for his allegorical landscapes set in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

Central Park Central Park is an urban park in New York City located between the Upper West and Upper East Sides of Manhattan. It is the fifth-largest park in the city, covering . It is the most visited urban park in the United States, with an estimated ...

Early life

Born Mileta Andrejević in

Zrenjanin Zrenjanin ( sr-Cyrl, Зрењанин, ; hu, Nagybecskerek; ro, Becicherecu Mare; sk, Zreňanin; german: Großbetschkerek) is a city and the administrative center of the Central Banat District in the autonomous province of Vojvodina, Serbi ...

, Yugoslavia, Andrejević studied painting at the Belgrade Academy of Fine Arts. His brother, Krsta Andrejević, also become a well-known painter in the former Yugoslavia. As a teen, he lived through the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

occupation of Yugoslavia and was eventually conscripted into Tito's army at the end of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. Andrejević studied under Ivan Tabaković at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, where he joined several of the artists who would form the Zadar Group, including Mića Popović, Bata Mihajlović, Petar Omčikus, Ljubinka Jovanović, Kosara Bokšan, and Vera Božicković. In 1952, Andrejević relocated to

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

to study art and did not return to Yugoslavia for twenty years. He married the former Helen Bardeen in Paris in 1956 and came to live with her in New York City in 1958.

Critical success

Andrejević's work turned toward Pop Art during the late 1950s and his work was exhibited in the

Green Gallery The Green Gallery was an art gallery that operated between 1960 and 1965 at 15 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City. The gallery's director was Richard Bellamy, and its financial backer was the art collector Robert Scull. Green Gallery ...

then run by Richard Bellamy. In the 1960s, he adopted a more realist style that featured allegories of Greek myths set in Central Park. He received positive reviews from then

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

art critic

Hilton Kramer Hilton Kramer (March 25, 1928 – March 27, 2012) was an American art critic and essayist. Biography Early life Kramer was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and was educated at Syracuse University, receiving a bachelor's degree in English; ...

who called Andrejević, "clearly one of the most gifted painters of the contemporary Realist school." Kramer went on to write that, "He brings to his art an unusual sense of refinement - an eye calmly and exquisitely attuned to pictorial nuance. His best pictures achieve a purity of tone and a gravity of feeling unusual in the Realist painting of any period and very different, certainly, from some of the more clamorous Realist styles of our own day." Andrejević showed his work at the Robert Schoelkopf gallery and in the collections of the

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was desig ...

Washington D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, Na ...

and the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–194 ...

in New York City. He died of

lung cancer Lung cancer, also known as lung carcinoma (since about 98–99% of all lung cancers are carcinomas), is a malignant lung tumor characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissues of the lung. Lung carcinomas derive from transformed, malign ...

in 1989.

References

External links

*Art View; ANDREJEVIC- N ALLEGORICAL REALIS

by Hilton Kramer, New York Times, January 11, 1981. {{DEFAULTSORT:Andrejevic, Milet 1925 births 1989 deaths University of Arts in Belgrade alumni Artists from New York City Yugoslav Partisans members Deaths from lung cancer in New York (state) Yugoslav emigrants to the United States