Soldiers Sing (Felt) Blues

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15 Nov

The exhibition entitled “Soldiers sing (felt pen) blues”, as a retrospective look at the creativity of the artist Novica Kovač, who died prematurely, was opened in the Montenegrin Art Gallery “Miodrag Dado Đurić” in Cetinje, organized by the National Museum of Montenegro.

Opening the exhibition, the director of the National Museum, Jakša Ćalasan, said that Novica Kovač is a soldier of our time, a hero of his family and community, and his dear friend.

“With his distinctive and strong expression, sharpness, honesty, the topics he dealt with and with what enthusiasm, he included himself among the great artists. From our perspective, Novica left too soon, but he did not remain unfinished. Looking at all these drawings of soldiers, battles, all these skies, seas, landscapes, family, I’ll just say – Novice, heroic!”

Ćalasan thanked Kovač’s wife Nikoleta, who gave him his works and who, as he pointed out, was his great love and inspiration. He also thanked the curator of the exhibition, Ljiljana Karadzic, for her initiative, dedicated and dedicated work, which, according to him, resulted in a great exhibition, as well as Milovan Rudić for giving a significant number of works from his collection.

Exhibition curator Ljiljana Karadžić said that Kovač was a passionate draftsman, graphic artist and painter, and that collages and illustrations occupy a special place in his very productive oeuvre.

“An atypical formal approach, based on the use of cheap materials, paper, felt-tip pens, ballpoint pens and wooden crayons, whether it is classical works or complex collages made from his own drawings, characterized his entire work. Uninhibited play, freedom of movement between different genres and unencumbered by conventions make Kovač’s oeuvre heterogeneous and stylistically elusive. Nevertheless, the careful eye of the observer will not miss the fact that these unpretentious works, interwoven with fine humor, are the most numerous group of works that the artist developed since childhood they have been “Soldiers”. Listening to his grandfather’s stories and epic poems at an early age, intoxicated by legends about heroes, warfare, honor and courage, Kovač created battle games on paper, imaginatively inventing his own rules of warfare, Karadžić said and added that over time began to incorporate into his works a philosophical view of life, drawing experiences, and that soldiers became ambiguous metaphors for both the state of society and personal battles.

Karadžić pointed out that the layered cycle “About nature” has as its starting point the phenomenon of nature through three different approaches and realizations: as a landscape, as a human creation and as a demiurge’s creation.

“The landscapes, which Novica calls nature studies based on the model, are dominantly related to the hill in the Bay of Kotor that can be seen from the terrace of the family apartment. They were done quickly enough to preserve the spontaneity and simplicity of the manuscript, but also concentrated enough so that this spontaneity would not be impaired the culture of drawing/painting.The same motif manifests itself through the drawing/painting sometimes as airy, atmospheric and lyrical, precise like Japanese graphics, and sometimes condensed, with emphasized sedimentary properties.

The drawings of imaginary beings that belong to a special group, in terms of meaning, as Karadzic said, are the most complex part of the cycle “On Nature”. She also pointed out that through the series of illustrations for the modern fairy tale “Carousel” the story of the happy love between the artist and his wife was told.

Novica Kovač (Nikšić, 1980 – Kotor, 2021) graduated from FLU Cetinje, department of graphics in the class of prof. Anke Burić in 2005. He was engaged in painting, drawing, illustration and comics. He worked as an art teacher at the “Stefan Mitrov Ljubiša” primary school in Budva. He had 14 solo and several collective exhibitions. In cooperation with Veselin Vlahović, he illustrated two fairy tales for children from the series “Doctor Macak”. He was the co-author of the children’s book “Vrtuljak”, which he published together with his wife Nikoleta Petrović Kovač.