Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, February 18, 2021: Raco Dimitrijević, a Bosnian conceptual artist (#1210)

Thursday, February 18, 2021

Artist of the Day, February 18, 2021: Raco Dimitrijević, a Bosnian conceptual artist (#1210)

Slobodan "Braco" Dimitrijević (1948) is a Bosnian conceptual artist. His works deal mainly with history and the individual's place in it. He lives and works in Paris, France.

He has exhibited internationally since the 1970s, including at the Tate Gallery in 1985. He has participated in documenta (1972, 1977 and 1992) and the Venice Biennale. His works are held in the collection of the Tate Gallery, MoMA Museum of Modern Art New York, and that of the Centre Pompidou, among others.

Braco Dimitrijević was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. His father was the painter Vojo Dimitrijević, one of the most famous modern artists in Yugoslavia. He started painting at the age of 5 and was featured in a TV show entitled Filmske Novosti (Film News) in 1957. His first conceptual work dates back to 1963.

He went on to study at Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, from which he graduated in 1971. He then studied at Saint Martin's School of Art in London from 1971 to 1973.

In the 1970s, Dimitrijevic gained attention when he began his Casual Passer-by series. The work features very big close-up photographic portraits of everyday people that were hung on buildings and billboard in different cities in Europe and America.

In the mid-seventies he started incorporating in his installations original paintings borrowed from museum collections. The Triptychos Post Historicus, realized in numerous museums around the world, unite in a harmonious synthesis high art, everyday objects, and fruit. The artist’s statement “Louvre is my studio, street is my museum” expresses both the dialectical and transgressive nature of his oeuvre. In the last thirty years, Dimitrijevic has realized over 500 Triptychos Post Historicus, with paintings ranging from Leonardo’s Madonna to Malevich’s Red Square, in numerous museum collections including the Tate Gallery, London, the Louvre, the Musee National d’Art Moderne Paris, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York, the Musee d’Orsay, and the Russian State Museum, St Petersburg, amongst many others.

In the early 1980s, Braco Dimitrijevic started making installations in which wild animals confront artifacts and works of art, thus joining two cultural models, the occidental model and the model offered by other cultures that live in greater harmony with nature. In 1998, the artist realized one-man shows at Paris Zoo with installations in the cages of lions, tigers, crocodiles, camels and bisons. The exhibition was seen by one million people. It was reviewed by the international press of some 40 countries and received repeated CNN Television coverage.

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