Đorđe Andrejević Kun

Đorđe Andrejević Kun (; 31 March 1904 – 17 January 1964) was a Serbian and Yugoslav painter and graphic artist, a participant in the Spanish Civil War and the National Liberation War in Yugoslavia and a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He is known for his paintings, graphic designs and woodcuts. He designed the coat of arms of Belgrade, the emblem of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the emblem of the Socialist Republic of Serbia and several Yugoslav orders and medals.

Biography

Early life

Kun was born on 31 March 1904 in Wrocław (Breslau), then part of the Kingdom of Prussia, to Veljko Andrejević Kun and his wife Gertruda as the fourth of five children. Veljko was a graphic artist who moved to Germany in 1892 where he studied engraving. Đorde started displaying artistic talent at an early age. The Andrejević family moved to Belgrade in 1914, where Veljko opened a printing house in Balkanska Street. After completing primary school, Đorđe completed four grades of high school and, in accordance to his father's wishes, learned the printing trade.

Studies and early works

Between 1921 and 1925, Kun studied painting at the Royal Art School in Belgrade, where he was taught by painters Petar Dobrović, Ljuba Ivanović and Milan Milovanović. Among his classmates were Stanislav Staša Beložanski, Anton Huter, Momčilo Moma Stevnović, Stanka Lučev and others. Milovanović and Ivanović in particular influenced Kun's artistic development, which is why later in his artistic career he wavered between form and color and between painting and graphics, while Dobrović had an influence on his social involvement.

Thanks to a Belgrade benefactor, merchant lijia Rankic, he received a scholarship to study painting in Italy. For two full years, between 1925 and 1927, he stayed in Rome, Florence, Milan and Venice, where he studied, painted and visited museums and galleries. During his training in Italy, he painted copies of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, namely those of Michelangelo, Tītian, Veronese, and Tintoretto, which he sent to his benefactor. After Italy, he continued his third year of studies in Paris, where he studied contemporary artists Cézanne, Modigliani and the Bulgarian painter Gilles Paskin. During this period Kun started selling his first paintings, which are kept in private collections.

After returning to Belgrade in 1929, Kun took part in the autumn exhibition of Belgrade artists. This was one of his first public appearances. Critics praised Kun's skillful composition, but criticized his use of dark, earthy colors. During the next two years, he participated in spring and autumn exhibitions at the Cvijeta Zuzorić Art Pavilion in Kalemegdan, where the audience could see about a dozen of his compositions, portraits, still life paintings, self-portraits and landscapes. In February of 1931, he had his first solo exhibition at the Art Pavilion, dominated by two themes — still life and self-portraits.

In September of the same year, he participated in an anonymous competition to design the coat of arms of Belgrade, in which 56 artists from all over Yugoslavia took part. The competition ended in November, and Kun's work under the title ''Crvena trojka'' (Red Triptych) was awarded the first prize of five thousand dinars. His design became the official coat of arms of Belgrade, which is still used today. The same year Kun married Nada Ratković, an art history student at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, whom he met in 1925. During her studies, Nada was a member of a Marxist Club and, due to her communist activities, was arrested and brought before the State Court, but was released due to lack of evidence. Đorđe and Nada first lived in Čubura, and in 1935, after their daughter Mira was born, they moved to Kun's studio in the attic of the Vojislav llić Elementary School in Vračar, where they lived until 1937.

Social artistry

While an apprentice in his father workshop, Đorde liked to socialise with the workers, and he subsequently joined the Association of Graphic Workers. In 1923 he painted a poster for the International Workers' Day celebration, which was printed and put up around the city and in streetcars. Kun's interest in left-wing ideas and communism most likely arose during his stay in Paris, where he received books on Lenin and the Soviet Union from friends. Through his wife Nada he began to associate with communists and members of the then illegal Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ). Left-wing ideas did not affect his artistic expression prior to 1934. The conference of the International Association of Revolutionary Writers, held in 1930 in Kharkiv, and the First Congress of Soviet Writers, held in August 1934 in Moscow, defined the concept of socialist realism, an artistic style with the aim of spreading communist and socialist ideas, which highly influenced Kun's artistic output from that point onwards.

From 1931 to 1934, Kun was a member of the art association ''Oblik'', one of the most significant art groups in interwar Yugoslavia, whose members included painters Branko Popović, Petar Dobrović, Jovan Bijelić, Sava Šumanović, Veljko Stanojević, Milo Milunović and Marino Tartalja. As a member of ''Oblik'', Kun exhibited his works until 1934, when, together with a group of like-minded leftist artists, he founded the art group ''Život'', whose members were painters Mirko Kujačić, Dragan Beraković, Đurđe Teodorović, Radojica Živanović Noe, as well as sculptors Vladeta Piperski and Stevan Bodnarov. They defined their art as "combative realism" and were against '' I'art pour l'art'', accepting socialist realism as their artistic direction. They maintained ties with the Zagreb group ''Zemlja'', which was banned in 1935. A group of artists, led by Bodnarov, Beraković, Kujačić and Kun, submitted a ''Resolution on the financial situation of artists'', demanding certain concessions for renting the exhibition space of the Kalemegdan Art Pavilion and changing the selection criteria of works for their exhibitions. Their demands were rejected and they subsequently boycotted the 1936 autumn exhibition, and later that year held a boycott exhibition at the Technical Faculty in Belgrade.

Kun aimed to depict the daily life of workers in his art as a way to fight against class injustice. He returned to making graphics which he deemed the most suitable medium. In the summer of 1934, together with his wife, he traveled to Bor with the aim of making a "collection of graphics depicting miners". The mine in Bor, then owned by a French company, was not fenced off and Kun could freely visit the mining facilities; the open pit and the smelter, as well as workshops. While collecting material for his work, he was caught by a mining supervisor who reported him to the police. At the police hearing, he was warned not to visit the mine without a permit and was ordered to leave the city. He took refuge in Zaječar, and then illegally returned to Bor. He spent a month collecting material, taking photographs and drawing sketches of the mine and its workers.

After returning to Belgrade, he created a set of graphics titled ''Blood-soaked Gold'' (Krvavo zlato) with the aim of displaying the lives of Yugoslav miners and workers. Although the collection was finished, he was unable to find a printer in Belgrade who would print his work. He printed 10 copies of the collection in his studio in 1936. With the help of architecture student Voja Midić, he reached printer Jovan Luks from Stari Bečej, who agreed to print the collection. In January 1937, the first 250 copies were printed, and soon after, a second edition of 1,000 copies was published, which the writer Jovan Popović wrote the foreword for. The map of graphics depicting the difficult daily life of miners and arduous work, as well as the dissolute life of profiteers, was banned by the Belgrade City Administration in February of 1937.woodcut