Ljubica "Cuca" Sokić (9 December 1914 – 8 January 2009) was a prominent Serbian and Yugoslav

painter Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ...

of the twentieth century.

Biography

She was born in

Bitola Bitola (; mk, Битола ) is a city in the southwestern part of North Macedonia. It is located in the southern part of the Pelagonia valley, surrounded by the Baba (North Macedonia), Baba, Nidže, and Kajmakčalan mountain ranges, north of th ...

North Macedonia North Macedonia, ; sq, Maqedonia e Veriut, (Macedonia before February 2019), officially the Republic of North Macedonia,, is a country in Southeast Europe. It gained independence in 1991 as one of the successor states of Socialist Feder ...

, where her mother Ruža was refugee during the

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

. Her father was Manojlo Sokić, a journalist, who owned defunct Belgrade paper

Pravda ''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, "Truth") is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most influential papers in the ...

. She attended the high school in Belgrade, where Zora Petrović was her professor. She was also taught painting by, among others,

Beta Vukanović Beta Vukanović (18 April 1872 – 31 October 1972), also known as Babette Bachmayer, was a Serbian painter and centenarian. Biography Born in Bamberg, Upper Franconia, German Empire to a Serbian family, she initially studied painting at the ...

and Ivan Radović. She also studied in

Paris Paris () is the capital and 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), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...

from 1936 to 1939, where she attended evening nude classes at the

Académie de la Grande Chaumière The Académie de la Grande Chaumière is an art school in the Montparnasse district of Paris, France. History The school was founded in 1904 by the Catalan painter Claudio Castelucho on the rue de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, near the Académ ...

, and began studying graphics at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Having returned from Paris to Belgrade, she presented her works independently for the first time in 1939 in Belgrade pavilion Cvijeta Zuzorić. She was one of the founders of the art group ''"Desetorica"'' ("The Group of Ten"). She was a professor at the Academy of Visual Arts in Belgrade between 1948–72, where she taught aquarel and painting. In 1968 she became a corresponding member of the

Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts ( la, Academia Scientiarum et Artium Serbica, sr-Cyr, Српска академија наука и уметности, САНУ, Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, SANU) is a national academy and the ...

, and from 1978 regular member of the academy. Besides painting, already during her studies, she drew children's comics for her father's paper Pravda, and after the

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 World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

she illustrated Poletarac,

Zmaj A Slavic dragon is any dragon in Slavic mythology, including the Russian '' zmei'' (or ''zmey''; ), Ukrainian ''zmiy'' (), and its counterparts in other Slavic cultures: the Bulgarian ''zmey'' (), the Slovak ''drak'' and ''šarkan'', Czech ''dra ...

, Pionir, Pionirske novine. She has created illustrations for more than thirty children's books. She also worked in cinematography. Her paintings are described as ''intimistic''. At first she painted

still life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...

landscape A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes th ...

s, figures and

portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this ...

s. Later she was moving towards simplifying forms, geometry and moderate abstraction. At times she used collage and experimental materials techniques. She received more than twenty various awards and recognitions for her artistic opus. Her sister is the famous Serbian actress and writer Ružica Sokić, and her nephew is Abdulah Numan, the

Mufti A Mufti (; ar, مفتي) is an Islamic jurist qualified to issue a nonbinding opinion ('' fatwa'') on a point of Islamic law (''sharia''). The act of issuing fatwas is called ''iftāʾ''. Muftis and their ''fatwas'' played an important rol ...

of Serbia. She died on 8 January 2009, aged 94, in Belgrade. She was interred five days later at Novo Groblje cemetery.

References

External links

Webpage with Sokić's worksBiography in SerbianShort biography and selected work
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sokic, Ljubica 1914 births 2009 deaths People from Bitola Members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts 20th-century Serbian painters Serbian women painters 20th-century women artists