Olja Ivanjicki: Painting the Future

by Sue Hubbard

Olja Ivanjicki is one of Serbia’s most important and best-loved contemporary artists. Producing work since the 1950s, she first came to prominence in her native country with Mediala, a group of painters, writers, and architects that made a significant impact on the public and cultural life of Belgrade at the end of the fifties and beginning of the sixties. A recipient of a Ford Foundation scholarship in 1962, Ivanjicki left Serbia to live and work, albeit briefly, in the United States, where she was brought into contact with the most important prevailing artistic trend of the time, Pop Art. This was to have a lasting influence on her work. Ivanjicki’s paintings are distinguished by the way in which they combine the figures and symbols of diverse cultures and civilizations -- past, present, and future -- to form imaginative montages that evoke, in almost cinematic terms, the spirit of an age. She is, however, much more than just a painter: she is also a sculptor, poet, newspaper columnist, costume designer, and architect. The book aims to appraise these aspects of her work, as well as her painting, over the course of her long and distinguished career, and by doing so to bring her work to a wider international audience.

280 pages, Hardcover

First published August 18, 2009

About the author

Sue Hubbard is a freelance art critic, novelist and poet. Twice winner of the London Writers competition she was the Poetry Society’s first-ever Public Art Poet. She was also commissioned by the Arts Council and the BFI to create London’s biggest art poem that leads from Waterloo to the IMAX. Her latest collection Ghost Station was published by Salt Publishing in 2004. Depth of Field, her first novel, was published in 2000. John Berger called it a “remarkable first novel.” Sue is a regular contributor to The Independent and The New Statesman where she writes on contemporary art. In 2006 she was awarded a major Arts Council Literary Award.

Reviews

[Stephen Simpson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The big, heavy, hardbound art books are kind of an "are what they are" proposition - you either like the art or you don't, and you're not going to be reviewed into liking what you don't like.

If you like art in the style of Dali (at least somewhat...), Ivanjicki may be your thing. This was a new discovery for me, so I'm not sure how representative this of her whole body of work, but what's in here is interesting and challenging.