“Enformal imposed Montenegrin karst on me quite by accident… It’s something that you can’t escape from anywhere, no matter where you took pictures. Even those who are far from Montenegro, their hearts remain in those hills… The very landscape of Montenegro Above, which I painted – as if it was written or drawn in that handwriting – enformel. Montenegro is one big enformel painting.”
Branko Filipović Filo
On this day, in 1924, the great Montenegrin and Yugoslav painter Branko Filipović Filo was born in Cetinje.
In the context of the Belgrade Enformal, Filo is considered a unique and unique phenomenon. Ever since his student days at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, he showed interest in experimenting with the material – sand mixed with pigment, which he studied as a fresco-painting technology with Jaroslav Kratina, and which he transferred to his painting, which caused the displeasure of his professor Milo Milunović. However, this affection for matter has deeper psychophysical roots. He is the original image of his homeland – the Montenegrin karst, which became an inseparable part of his thought, emotional and painting world.
Philo’s enformel came from the interior of his being, in which, as he says, something was “eternal cooking”, and not as a need to adhere to some “painting direction”. In fact, he considered that he never left the form, because each of his pictures is associated with something, and for him enformal is more a handwriting and a way of expression.
(Art historian Ljiljana Zeković)