Days, even months have passed since the date designated for the presentation of the third award “Stojan Ćelić, artist, theorist and critic, academician” to the sculptor SLAVOLJUB CAJA RADOJČIĆ. The award has always been in the form of a monograph study of the artist and its presentation the moment for the announcement of the following recipient of this prestigious recognition. The Corona Virus has endeavoured to stop us in our activities but in vain – it has only slowed us a little. Therefore, only now, with noticeable delay (not our habit, at all) we joyfully report that the monograph has been printed – SLAVOLJUB RADOJČIĆ, by Ivana Simeonović Ćelić and Savo Popović.


SLAVOLJUB RADOJČIĆ


Born in Belgrade in 1942. He graduated (1965) and completed the specialized course (1967) at the Academy (presently, Faculty) of Fine Arts in Belgrade, Department of Sculpture, with Professor Miodrag Miša Popović. He stayed at the Faculty from 1971 to 2007 following a regular academic career from Assistant to Full Professor for Drawing and Sculpture.

He is member of the Association of Serbian Artists.

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MONOGRAPH

The monograph study dedicated to the eminent sculptor and professor of  Belgrade University of the Arts, Slavoljub Caja Radojčić, written by two art historians – Dr Ivana Simeonović Ćelić, Director of the ZEPTER MUSEUM who had initiated the publishing of these books, and Savo Popović, prominent expert in modern and contemporary art – is the first extensive, systematic and complete study of the artist’s development, his working method, inspirations, poetics, exhibitions, successes, but also, in a broadest sense, the treatise about his relationship to students and life, his family, colleagues and friends.

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Dr Ivana Simeonović Ćelić conceived and carefully realised the entire principal idea and design of the book. Apart from a detailed and captivatingly composed artist’s biography, the monograph comprises a full bibliography of texts on Radojčić, including visual recordings, lists of solo and group shows, memorials in public spaces, a list of awards, recognitions and his participation in symposia and artists’ colonies.

The introductory study, written by the experienced erudite Savo Popović, is based on the meticulously gathered documentary material, on full insight into the overall artist’s opus with Popović’s professional use and quotation of texts about Slavoljub Radojčić, and particularly on the enclosure of important evidence supplied by the artist himself. With these combinations the text acquires additional authenticity and assuredness, a specific atmosphere and character. A particular value of this study lies in the communicative property of Popović’s language, which is in absolute concordance with the artist’s sculptural expression and a certain anecdotal quality which never turns into a banal narrative, but, on the contrary, accentuates his sharp mind and intellectual strength.

Dr Irina Subotić, Prof. Emeritus (excerpt from her peer-review)

THE PRESENTATION OF THE AWARD

The monograph and the accompanying charter were festively presented to Slavoljub Caja Radojčić on Friday, 25 December 2020 in a circle of friends and by his sculpture Lunch with S.Ć., on the ground floor of the ZEPTER MUSEUM.

We leave the exhibition and the launching of the book for some better times.

  

The “Stojan Ćelić, artist, theorist and critic, academician” Award for the Year 2022

The Managing Board of the ZEPTER MUSEUM (Bojana Burić, chairperson and members: Dr Irina Subotić, Dušan Otašević, Jelena Popović and Ivana Simeonović Ćelić, as adjunct member) discussed possible candidates for the fourth Award (the first recipient was the painter Bogoljub Boba Jovanović – 2016, the second, the sculptor Milija Nešić – 2018, the third, the sculptor Slavoljub Caja Radojčić – 2020) and agreed in unison that the fourth recipient should be the artist VJERA DAMJANOVIĆ.

JUSTIFICATION

Vjera Damjanović, the fourth recipient of the “Stojan Ćelić, artist, theorist and critic, academician” Award for the Year 2022, has followed a specific, recognizable visual code in this milieu. The artist is distinguished by a deeply contemplated and carefully analysed transposition of complex ideas into a structured artistic communication, layered into richly classified cycles – simultaneously independent and mutually interlaced. The specificity of Vjera’s visual art language lies in an exceptional feeling for the tactile quality of the matter, regardless of the material she employs – ready-made, known, usual and found objects, or those she produces herself, such as the hand-made and coloured paper.

She has enriched the tradition of modernism by using precious, exceptional materials, as well as those expendable everyday objects, linking them together in an unbelievably sensitive and unusual way, within the context of the basic issues of our civilisation. She is interested in symbolic questions of the existence, the relationships between the male and female principles, the Eros and Thanatos, in the philosophical discourse about life or nothingness, the material and spiritual world, the tangible and visionary reality, the tradition of dreams, the written word and books… She penetrates the values of faith and the doubts of power – in a word, she touches upon our elementary strata of life with profound emotions, stepping into anthropological and destined meanings.

We suppose that Vjera Damjanović has been able to develop and perfect her refined visual language that fosters subtle differences and relations in the material, form and colour, owing to her considerable erudition and the support of her professor, the academician Stojan Ćelić in whose class she graduated painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. We are sure that the professor would be proud of Vjera’s accomplishments and she will certainly carry the Award named after him with dignity, as the highest acknowledgement she, undoubtedly, deserves.