Miodrag "Mića" Popović (12 June 1923 – 22 December 1996) was a Serbian painter, experimental filmmaker and one of the major figures of the

Yugoslav Black Wave Yugoslav Black Wave (also referred to as Black Wave; or sh-Latn-Cyrl, label=none, separator=" / ", Crni talas, Црни талас) is a blanket term for a Yugoslav film and broader cultural movement starting from the early 1960s and ending in ...

Life and work

Popović was born on 12 June 1923 in

Loznica Loznica ( sr-cyrl, Лозница, ) is a List of cities in Serbia, city located in the Mačva District of western Serbia, on the right bank of the Drina river. In 2022 the city had a total population of 19,515, while the administrative area had a ...

. He finished grammar school in

Belgrade Belgrade is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers and at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin, Pannonian Plain and the Balkan Peninsula. T ...

. After the Second World War, most of which he spent in Belgrade working at odd jobs, he enrolled the Academy of Fine Arts in

in 1946. He studied under

Ivan Tabaković Ivan Tabaković (10 December 1898, Arad – 27 June 1977, Belgrade) was an Austro-Hungarian-born Serbian painter. Biography Tabaković was born in Arad, then part of the Habsburg Empire, in 1898, a son of noted Serbian architect Milan T ...

. Together with Bata Mihajlović, Petar Omčikus, Mileta Andrejević, Ljubinka Jovanović, Kosara Bokšan, and his future wife Vera Božičković-Popović, he went to

Zadar Zadar ( , ), historically known as Zara (from Venetian and Italian, ; see also other names), is the oldest continuously inhabited city in Croatia. It is situated on the Adriatic Sea, at the northwestern part of Ravni Kotari region. Zadar ...

in 1947 and formed the famous " Zadar group". After returning to Belgrade, they were forbidden to return to their university studies, as the authorities viewed the work of the Zadar group as subversive, but sometime later, they were all allowed to return except for Popović, who continued to study on his own. He was the first post-war painter in Belgrade to organize an independent exhibition in 1950. During the following several years he mostly lived in Paris, where he had his solo exhibit in 1953. As a painter, Popović is best known for his ''informel'' period (1958–1968) and his "Scenes Painting" (''slikarstvo prizora'') (from 1968). Among the Scenes Paintings, one of the more notable ones was "May 1, 1985," which memorialized events surrounding an alleged attack on a farmer in Kosovo named Đorđe Martinović. He also made several films in the 1960s, two of which ("Čovek iz hrastove šume" and "Delije") were banned by the government for their antisocialist content. Mića Popović was elected a regular member of the

Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (; , SANU) is a national academy and the most prominent academic institution in Serbia, founded in 1841 as Society of Serbian Letters (, DSS). The Academy's membership has included Nobel Prize, Nobel la ...

in 1986. The Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts marked the centenary of his birth with the exhibition titled ‘Mića Popović – The Art of Permanent Rebellion’, held at the SASA Gallery, September 5 - November 5, 2023. Cultural event ''Mićini i Verini dani'' (Mića and Vera's Days) was established in

on June 12, 2001 and has been held annually since then.

Written works

*''Sudari i harmonije'' (1954) *''U ateljeu pred noć'' (1962) *''Ishodište slike'' (1983) *''Velika ljubav Anice Huber'' (1999) *''Putopisni dnevnici'' (2006)

Films

*'' The Man from the Oak Forest'' (1964) *'' The Swarm'' (1966) *'' Hasanaginica'' (1967) *'' The Tough Ones'' (1968) *'' Burduš'' (1970)

Paintings

A significant collection of his painting is exhibited in Mića Popović and Vera Božičković-Popović Gallery, located in the artist's hometown of

. The gallery artworks span over five decades of his work, starting with ''Great-great-grandfather’s House in Loznica'' (1936), when Mića was only thirteen years old. Other representative works include ''Citizens'' (1949) and ''Gvozden's Graph'' (1970), all the way to ''Great Still Life'' (1989).

References

Books

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Popovic 1923 births 1996 deaths People from Loznica Yugoslav painters 20th-century Serbian painters Serbian male painters 20th-century Serbian male artists