Vladimir Velickovic
Born in Belgrade in 1935, VLADIMIR VELICKOVIC passed away in August 28, 2019.
Along with the artist’s many friends - artists, collectors, art historians and museum curators from all around the globe - Claude and France Lemand, and the family of French author Claude Aveline, would like to offer their sincerest condolences to his wife and children and to express our admiration and loyalty to the genious painter and draughtsman that he was.
VLADIMIR VELICKOVIC
Born in Belgrade in 1935, Vladimir Velickovic lived and worked in Paris. He graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of Belgrade in 1960 yet by 1962, Velickovic decided to dedicate his career to painting and drawing instead of architecture. He left Belgrade to go settle in Zagreb where he joined the State’s studio, led by Krsto Hegedusic. The Museum of Modern Art of Belgrade organized his first solo exhibition in 1963.
Vladimir Velickovic obtained the First Prize for Painting at the 1965 Paris Biennial and decided to settle in the French capital a year later. The Galerie du Dragon showcased his works in 1967, revealing his oeuvre to the art critics and to the public. He was thereafter labeled as one of the forerunners of Narrative Figuration.
In 1972, the artist discovered the research done by Edward Muybridge, the photographer and pioneer of cinematography. As a result, Velickovic’s work reveals bodies that seek movement, as if they were frozen by an impossible shifting. Vladimir Velickovic’s entire oeuvre is punctuated by images of torn bodies, abandoned landscapes and aggressive animals – death is omnipresent. His restrained palette composed of black, grey, white and blood-red, furthermore emphasize this chaos.
Since 1983, Vladimir Velickovic has been the head of the studio at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts of Paris and he was elected at the Academy of Fine Art in 2005.
Vladimir Velickovic passed away in August 28, 2019.
Translated from French by Valérie Hess
Encyclopaedia Universalis - Velickovic Vladimir.
It is difficult to discern what we admire the most in Vladimir Velickovic’s drawings and paintings. Alongside Dado and Ljuba, he is one of the three originally Yugoslavian painters, who settled in Paris after the war and who subsequently gained international recognition. Having graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of Belgrade, where he was born in 1935, and having settled in Paris in 1966, he instantly stood out because of the dynamism and sharpness of his drawing line. Marc Le Bot, who dedicated an important book on the artist in 1979, entitled Vladimir Velickovic, Essay on the Artistic Symbolism, preferred to label this form of mastered violence and baroque power as a ‘vertigo of geometry’. According to Le Bot, ‘Velickovic’s painting seems to reconcile with the most ancient artistic tradition as it is to be deciphered like an allegory of fate’. Orators, gallows, a man running, hurdles, obstacles, jumps, a man walking, birth, a beheaded man lying on stretcher (one of his most beautiful paintings – it was inspired by the death of Topino-Lebrun, a revolutionary painter who was decapitated by Bonaparte – that was offered to Alain Jouffroy in 1977 for the exhibition ‘Guillotine and Painting’ at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris): all these themes fall within an allegory of the human life, that is perceived as the universal paradigm for pictorial meditation. Additional subject matters, such as that of greyhound races, rat experiments, birds that have been run over or destroyed boxes, metaphorically reinforce the other themes.
Yet this type of painting raises questions on the direction taken by Western Painting since Cubism: it reacts against the withdrawal of the human figure yet it never falls into academism and hence creates a sort of vehement and almost distressed provocation that resonates the oeuvre of Francis Bacon, whom Velickovic befriended. ...
(© Online Encyclopaedia Universalis)
Translated from French by Valérie Hess
Works in Public Collections:
Stedelijk Museum – Amsterdam (NE)
Pinacothèque régionale du Val d’Aoste – Aoste (IT)
Fondation Vincent Van Gogh – Arles (FR)
Pinacothèque nationale – Athènes (GR)
Musée Frissiras – Athènes (GR)
Musée d’Art Contemporain – Belgrade (RS)
Musée National – Belgrade (RS)
Galerie de l’Académie des Sciences et des Arts – Belgrade (RS)
Kunstsammlung – Bochum (DE)
Museo Civico – Bologne (IT)
Slovenska Narodni Galley – Bratislava (SK)
Musée National – Bratislava (SK)
Galerie d’Art Moderne – Brescia (IT)
Musées Royaux des Beaux Arts de Belgique – Bruxelles (BE)
Museo de Bellas Artes – Caracas (VE)
Musée Bernard – Châteauroux (FR)
Instituteof ContemporaryArt – Chicago (US)
Musée d’Unterlinden – Colmar (FR)
RoyalMuseumof Fine Art – Copenhague (DK)
Museo Provincial de Bellas Artes – Cordoba (ES)
Staatliche Kunstsammlung – Dresde (DE)
Musée d’Art Contemporain – Dunkerque (FR)
Museum voor Schone Kunsten – Gand (BE)
Neure Galerie am Landesmuseum Johanneum – Graz (AT)
LandesMuseum– Hanovre (DE)
Museum Ateneum – Helsinki (FI)
Louisiana Museum– Humlebeak (DK)
Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts – Lausanne (CH)
Centre d’Art Contemporain – Lille (FR)
Centre d’Art Sacré Contemporain – Lille (FR)
Museumof Modern Art – Ljubljana (SI)
Museum Sztucki – Lodz (PL)
Tate Gallery – Londres (UK)
Lannan Foundation – Los Angeles (US)
Konsthall – Malmö (SE)
Musée Cantini – Marseille (FR)
Stadt Opera – Munich (DE)
Musée d’Art Moderne – Nîmes (FR)
Museum of Modern Art – New York (US)
AstrupFearnley Museum of Modern Art – Oslo (NO)
Henie – Onstad Foundation – Oslo (NO)
Galerie Nationale – Oslo (NO)
Musée National d’Art Moderne – Centre Pompidou – Paris (NO)
Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville – Paris (FR)
Bibliothèque Nationale – Paris (FR)
Museum, Institut du monde arabe. Donation Claude & France Lemand - Paris (FR)
Fondation Pfizer – Paris (FR)
Ecole des Beaux Arts – Cabinet de dessins – Paris (FR)
Musée de l’Histoire Contemporaine – Paris (FR)
Historial de la Grande Guerre – Péronne (FR)
Museumof Modern Art – Rijeka (HR)
Museo de Arte Moderno – Rio de Janeiro (BR)
Museum Boymans van Beuningen – Rotterdam (NL)
Fondation Maeght – Saint-Paul de Vence (FR)
Museumof Modern Art – Skopje (MK)
Musée d’Art Moderne – Strasbourg (FR)
Sara Hilden Foundation – Tampere (FI)
Museumof ModernArt – Téhéran (IR)
Musée d’Art Contemporain – Thessalonique (GR)
Musée des Beaux-Arts – Toulon (FR)
Fast Gallery – Trondheim (NO)
Matti Koivurinnen Taidemuseo – Turku (FI)
Hedendaagse Kunst – Utrecht (NL)
Museo d’Arte Moderna Ca’Pesaro – Venise (IT)
Musée d’Art Contemporain – Vitry-sur-Seine (FR)
Library of Congress – Washington(US)
Museum Kenritsu – Yamagata (JP)
ContemporaryArt Gallery – Zagreb (HR)