Vasa Pomorišac (15 December 1893 — 9 September 1961) was a Serbian artist and professor at the Academy of Applied Arts in Belgrade. He worked as a

painter Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

stained glass Stained glass refers to coloured glass as a material or art and architectural works created from it. Although it is traditionally made in flat panels and used as windows, the creations of modern stained glass artists also include three-dimensio ...

window maker,

etcher Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types ...

printmaker Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed technique ...

and he was also an art critic. He is considered an

expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

painter in the same category as his contemporaries

Mihajlo Petrov Mihajlo S. Petrov (1902-1983) was a Serbian-Yugoslavian avant-garde painter, graphic artist, illustrator, etcher, and art critic. Biography After he completed his studies under the tutelage of Ljubomir Ivanović at the Arts and Crafts School and ...

, Ivan Radović, Petar Dobrović, and Jovan Bijelić.

Biography

Pomorišac was born in the Serbian town of Modoš (now

Jaša Tomić Jakov Tomić ( sr-Cyrl, Јаков Томић; 23 October 1856 – 22 October 1922) was a Serbian journalist, politician and author from the Serbian region of Vojvodina, which was part of the Austrian Empire when he was born. Jaša Tomić, Seč ...

) in what was then part of the

Austrian Empire The Austrian Empire, officially known as the Empire of Austria, was a Multinational state, multinational European Great Powers, great power from 1804 to 1867, created by proclamation out of the Habsburg monarchy, realms of the Habsburgs. Duri ...

. He first studied painting with Stevan Aleksić until 1913, when he went to the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, where he was briefly a student of Gabriel von Hackl,

Franz von Stuck Franz Ritter von Stuck (February 23, 1863 – August 30, 1928), born Franz Stuck, was a German painter, sculptor, printmaker, and architect. Stuck was best known for his paintings of ancient mythology, receiving substantial critical acclaim with ...

and Angelo Jank. At Munich, he met fellow student Živorad Nastasijević (1893-1966), who became a close friend. His studies were interrupted by a period of national service between 1914 and 1918, when he served in the Austrian Army at the Russian front and after surrendering to the Russians, he joined the

First Serbian Volunteer Division The First Serbian Volunteer Division () or First Serbian Division, was a military formation of the First World War, created by Serbian Prime Minister Nikola Pašić, and organised in the city of Odessa in early 1916. This independent volunteer u ...

which participated with the Russians and Romanians against the

Central Powers The Central Powers, also known as the Central Empires,; ; , ; were one of the two main coalitions that fought in World War I (1914–1918). It consisted of the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulga ...

in the Battle of

Dobruja Dobruja or Dobrudja (; or ''Dobrudža''; , or ; ; Dobrujan Tatar: ''Tomrîğa''; Ukrainian language, Ukrainian and ) is a Geography, geographical and historical region in Southeastern Europe that has been divided since the 19th century betw ...

, where he was wounded. Pomorišac was taken to a

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

hospital where he soon recovered and spent the next year convalescing and at the same time familiarizing himself with the art treasures of the city and the works of great Russian painters. As a non-combatant, he was transferred from

Imperial Russia Imperial is that which relates to an empire, emperor/empress, or imperialism. Imperial or The Imperial may also refer to: Places United States * Imperial, California * Imperial, Missouri * Imperial, Nebraska * Imperial, Pennsylvania * ...

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

, where he received the status of a "war painter" at the Photographic section (''Fotografska sekcija'') of the Serbian Supreme Command (''Vrhovna komanda'') in

Salonika Thessaloniki (; ), also known as Thessalonica (), Saloniki, Salonika, or Salonica (), is the second-largest city in Greece (with slightly over one million inhabitants in its Thessaloniki metropolitan area, metropolitan area) and the capital cit ...

and worked in the Thessaloniki Atelier. After the war, on his return to Belgrade in 1919 he visits a Munich alumnus

Ljubo Babić Ljubomir Tito Stjepan Babić (14 June 1890 – 14 May 1974) was a Croatian artist, museum curator and literary critic. As an artist, he worked in a variety of media including oils, tempera, watercolour, drawing, etching, and lithography. He wa ...

Zagreb Zagreb ( ) is the capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Croatia#List of cities and towns, largest city of Croatia. It is in the Northern Croatia, north of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the ...

and enrolls in life-drawing classes given by Beta Vukanović at the Arts and Crafts 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 graduation, with his friend Ljubomir Ivanović he visits Serbian monasteries and copies frescoes and murals in Serbian villages in

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

and Romanian Banat. He then went to

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

where he attended classes at

Saint Martin's School of Art Saint Martin's School of Art was an art school, art college in London, England. It offered foundation and degree level courses. It was established in 1854, initially under the aegis of the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Saint Martin's beca ...

and the

Royal College of Art The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public university, public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City, London, White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design uni ...

while learning the craft of stained glass painting. He trained in London from 1920 to 1924 where he specialized in drawing and architecture at Saint Martin's (1921-1922) and took extra courses in

painting at London's

Central School of Art and Design The Central School of Art and Design was a school of fine and applied arts in London, England. It offered foundation and degree level courses. It was established in 1896 by the London County Council as the Central School of Arts and Crafts. ...

(1922-1924), becoming the first known Serbian artist to work in that medium. There he spent time visiting museums, galleries and castles studying all kinds of aspects of arts and architecture but found

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

still under the influence of

John Ruskin John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English polymath a writer, lecturer, art historian, art critic, draughtsman and philanthropist of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as art, architecture, Critique of politic ...

. He attended lectures by artist Percy J. Delf Smith, sculptor

George Frampton Sir George James Frampton, (18 June 1860 – 21 May 1928) was a British sculptor. He was a leading member of the New Sculpture movement in his early career when he created sculptures with elements of Art Nouveau and Symbolism, often combinin ...

, and architect

William Lethaby William Richard Lethaby (18 January 1857 – 17 July 1931) was an English architect and architectural historian whose ideas were highly influential on the late Arts and Crafts and early Modern movements in architecture, and in the fields of ...

whose visions followed the modern European trends, including his own. He returned to Belgrade in 1924. Since he was out of work, he accepted a commission from the Roman Catholic Church community in Jaša Tomić to paint an altar icon in the Catholic Church, then being restored in the neo-Gothic style. At the School of Arts and Crafts, he replaced Beta Vukanović as a teaching master from 1930 to 1931. In Belgrade, Pomorišac's stained glass work gave the Cvijeta Zuzorić Art Pavilion "a trendy

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

look".

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

was his home from 1935 to 1939. Since 1942 he was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgarde and since 1950 at the Academy of Applied Arts in Belgrade. He was a member of the Association of Warrior Painters and Sculptors of the 1912-1918 Wars, Lada, among the founders of ''Zograf'' (Painters) and the Association of Qualified Fine Artists in Belgrade. In 1944 he became a member of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (ULUS). In addition to engaging in the original painting, he often copied frescoes from our medieval churches and monasteries, which he exhibited in London and Paris, and gave three copies of frescoes from

Manasija The Manasija Monastery ( sr-Cyrl-Latn, манастир Манасија, manastir Manasija, separator=" / ", ) also known as Resava ( sr-Cyrl, Ресава, ), is a Serbian Orthodox monastery near Despotovac, Serbia founded by '' Despot'' Stefan ...

monastery to the Maritime Office at the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

in London.

Art career

Vasa Pomorišac believed that art was an organic part of society. It must be grounded in traditional creativity and such as to oppose modernism that is foreign to our cultural mentality. The ''Zograf'' (Painters) group was formed around this ideology and contained artists of the same or similar orientation - painters Stanislav Beložanski,

Živorad Nastasijević Živorad Nastasijević (Gornji Milanovac, 1893 - Belgrade, 1966) was a Serbian painter and war artist. Biography He was born into a family where his brothers included artists, Momcilo Nastasijević, Slavomir Nastasijević, and Svetomir Nastasijev ...

, Zdravko Sekulić, Josin Car, Ilija Kolarović, Svetolik Lukić, Radmila Milojković, Zdravko Sekulić and architects Bogdan Nestorović and Branislav Kojić. Modernist criticism saw them as a national anachronism and therefore inappropriate to the new age. Pomorišac especially emphasized his attachment to the past, Serbian and Byzantine, which he knew well and brought into his painting spiritually. He often copied murals from our medieval churches and monasteries that he exhibited in London and Paris. He was a very popular portrait painter and often expressed himself in that genre. Basically, his stylistic development ranged from moderate constructivism, through neo-classicism to cool, monochrome colorism. It is a very special and distinguished phenomenon in Serbian painting between the two world wars. Pomorišac is Serbia's first painter to paint on glass. Of his many works of this kind, which he produced before Belgrade became a victim of Axis and Allied bombing in World War II, only pieces that remained are the stained glass in the Old Palace and the Metropol Hotel. He is the author of a banknote, issued by the National Bank of Yugoslavia, of 100 dinars, dated July 15, 1934, and of 1,000 dinars, dated September 6, 1935, which was not put into circulation. Both notes feature compositions inspired by national history. He is also the author of 1,000 dinars banknote, man and woman in national costume, with many details and symbols, but of a dark color, bearing the date of May 1, 1942, published by the Serbian National Bank, during the period of Nazi occupation.

Solo exhibitions

* 1926 Men's gymnasium hall, Novi Sad * 1927 Art Friends' Salon, Cvijeta Zuzorić Pavilion, Belgrade * 1937 ''Galerie Le Niveau'', Paris * 1939 ''Galerie Contemporaine'', Paris * 1953 Art Pavilion, (retrospective exhibition), Belgrade * 1954 City Museum, Zrenjanin, Higher Mixed High School, Šabac * 1956 Novi Sad * 1959 High School, Svetozarevo, Art Pavilion, Podgorica * 1960 Hall of the Peoples Committee, Uzice * 1970 - 1971 Gallery of the Cultural Center (retrospective exhibition), Belgrade * 1981 Small art salon, Novi Sad * 1982 National Museum, Belgrade * 1983 Gallery of the Center for Culture "Olga Petrov", Pančevo * 1987 Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade (retrospective exhibition)

Art criticism

* 1927 Painter Stevan Aleksić, Raška, vol. I, no. 56, Belgrade * 1927 Živorad Nastasijević's Art Exhibition, Literary Criticism, December 2, no. 1. p. 4-5, Belgrade * 1928 Stjepan Baković Exhibition, Literary Criticism, January 2, no. 2-3. p. 5, Belgrade * 1928 Ljubomir Ivanović Exhibition, "Lade", Life and Work, April, vol. And, Vol. 3. p. 324-236, Belgrade * 1928 Ivan Radović, Life and Work, April, vol. And, Vol. 4. p. 313-314, Belgrade * 1928 The Crisis of our Fine Arts, Matica Srpska Yearbook, May, vol. CII, Vol. 316, Vol. 2. p. 259-263, Novi Sad * 1928 Exhibition of Sculptures in Engraving by Risto Stijović, Life and Work, June, vol. And, Vol. 6. p. 478-479, Belgrade * 1928 Our Glory

Uroš Predić Uroš Predić ( sr-Cyrl, Урош Предић, ; Orlovat, 7 December 1857 – Belgrade, 12 February 1953) was a Serbian Realism (visual arts), Realist painter. Along with Paja Jovanović and Đorđe Krstić, he is considered the most important ...

, ''Banatski glasnik'', vol. II, no. 6-8, Zrenjanin * 1929 About Our Medieval Art, Radio Belgrade, May, Belgrade * 1929 Our Art Events - After the Autumn Exhibition at the

Cvijeta Zuzorić Cvijeta Zuzorić (; also ''Fiora Zuzori'' or ''Flora Zuzzeri'') (1552–1648) was a lyric poet from the Republic of Ragusa. She wrote in Italian, Latin and Croatian. Life She was born in Ragusa, (now called Dubrovnik) into a prominent merchan ...

Salon, Social Renewal, September 17, Vol. I, no. 2, s, 11-12, Belgrade * 1930 Two significant exhibitions, Social Renewal, February 2, vol. II, no. 5. p. 12-13, Belgrade * 1930 II Spring Exhibition of Yugoslav Artists at the Art Pavilion, Belgrade Municipal Gazette, June 25, vol. XLVIII, iss. 13. p. 666-670, Belgrade * 1930 Great Russian Exhibition, Social Renewal, February, no. 13. p. 12-13, Belgrade * 1933 How to Look at a Work of Art, Kolarac National University, February, Belgrade * 1953 Mosaic, Mosaic, September–October, vol. I, no. 1, Belgrade

Bibliography

* 1925 Mihailo S. Petrov, Painter Pomorišac, Vreme, October 8, Belgrade * 1926 Rade Drainac, Pomorišac, Vidovdan, 6 January, Belgrade * 1926 Todor Manojlović, Exhibition of paintings by Vasa Pomorisc, Matica Srpska Yearbook, March, Vol. 307, Vol. 3. p. 291-298, Belgrade * 1927 Milan Kašanin, Exhibitions in April, Serbian Literary Gazette, May 1, Vol. XXI, iss. 1. p. 61-64, Belgrade * 1927 Sreten Stojanović, Exhibition of Works by Vas Pomorišc, Misao, Belgrade, 1-16. May, Vol. XXIV, Vol. 1-2. p. 104-106, Belgrade * 1929 Branko Popović, Autumn Exhibition of Belgrade Artists, Serbian Literary Gazette, 16 February, Vol. XXVI, No. 4. p. 298-305, Belgrade * 1931 Rastko Petrović (N. J.), Spring Exhibition of Yugoslav Artists - Painting, Politics, May 11, Belgrade * 1933 Dragan Aleksić, Exhibition of the Art Group "Zograf", Vreme, March 21, Belgrade * 1933 Rastko Petrović (N. J.), Zograf Artists at the Art Pavilion, Politika, March 22, Belgrade * 1933 Todor Manojlović, Zograf Exhibition, Serbian Literary Gazette, April 1, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 7. p. 548-549, Belgrade * 1934 Dragan Aleksić, Sixth Spring Exhibition of Painters and Sculptors, Time, May 25, Belgrade * 1935 Rastko Petrović (N. J.), Seventh Spring Exhibition, Politika, May 23, Belgrade * 1953 Aleksa Čelebonović, Painting of Your Maritime, Borba, November 15, Belgrade * 1953 Miodrag B. Protić, Exhibition of Your Maritime Office, NIN, November 22, Belgrade * 1956 Lazar Trifunovic, Constructivism in Serbian Modern Painting, Delo, June, no. 6. p. 727-734, Belgrade * 1958 Pavle Vasić, Art Groups in Serbia, Art, vol. II, no. 10. p. 10, Zagreb * 1964 Miodrag B. Protić, Vasa Pomorišac, Contemporaries II. p. 79-85, Nolit, Belgrade * 1968 Ješa Denegri, Forms of non-figuration in contemporary painting in Serbia, Life of Art, no. 7-8. p. 17-35, Zagreb * 1968 Pavle Vasić, Constructive Painting, Politics, January 26, Belgrade * 1969 Lazar Trifunović, Old and New Art. The Idea of the Past in Modern Art, Zograf, The Fresco Gallery, no. 3. p. 39-52, Belgrade * 1970 Miodrag B. Protić, Vasa Pomorišac, Serbian Painting of the HH Century. p. 130-133, Nolit, Belgrade * 1970 Vasilije B. Sujić, (cat. Retrospective exhibitions), Gallery of the Cultural Center, Belgrade * 1970 Pavle Vasić, The Unknown Vasa Pomorisac, Politika, December 28, Belgrade * 1973 Miodrag B. Protić, Yugoslav Painting 1900-1950, BIGZ, Belgrade * 1973 Lazar Trifunović, Serbian Painting 1900-1950, Nolit, Belgrade * 1982 Nikola Kusovac, Vasa Pomorišac, (cat. Cat.), National Museum, Belgrade * 1982 Lazar Trifunović, Abstract Painting in Serbia. From Impressionism to Enformel, Nolit. p. 33-41, Belgrade * 1982 Jovan Despotović, On the Road to the Top. Vasa Pomorišac's Early Works, Politika Express, August 8, Belgrade * 1986 - 1987 Ljiljana Slijepčević, Vasa Pomorišac 1893-1961, (cat. Retrospective exhibitions, Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade

References