Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, November 15, 2021: Ivana Živić, a Serbian painter (#1418)

Monday, November 15, 2021

Artist of the Day, November 15, 2021: Ivana Živić, a Serbian painter (#1418)

The artwork of Ivana Živić has been drawing attention of both the critics and the public in Serbia for many years. Her artwork has continually been acclaimed, marked by a change of style, approach and pictorial expression that certainly enriches it and brings freshness and points to Ivana’s constant orientation towards experimentation. Her paintings are noticeable by her infatuation with water, swimming, the human body, the interior, and drapery that produces artwork of recognizable visual expression. Her talent and mastery in drawing is demonstrated in large size oil on canvas paintings. Dealing with this topic since 2013, she has produced a cycle of paintings Rooms of Water where she stays faithful to the realistic approach in painting. The Sales Gallery Belgrade showcases her latest paintings from her mature phase, characterized by a purified style, reduction of elements and enlargement of colored surfaces. She chooses the details carefully, still paying great attention to them, superbly processes them and successfully emphasizing the structure of the material they are made of. Thus, she creates a surreal, fantastic, imaginary world full of imagination, visions, hope, freed of movement and a loneliness that liberates.

Ivana approaches the treatment of the topic meticulously while conceptualizing and choosing the painterly paradigm carefully. Her insight into film directing and the art of film is evident as each image is a sequence from a film with a masterly positioned participant. She painstakingly prepares each scene paying attention to the interior/ scenery, costumes, the swimmer and each most minute detail on the painting. The models are dressed in designed clothes made of richly draped material of various structure as they swim making dynamic and interesting movements. Paying special attention to the costumes she collaborates with our young fashion designers, this time with Nevena Kragić. She takes photos of the detailed and well thought-out underwater scenes of models swimming in a pool and subsequently inserts them into the representative real interiors such as: the crypt of the St. Sava Temple in Belgrade, the drawing-room of the Spitzer Castle in Beočin and the mosque in Isfahan in Iran.

As a painter Ivana has remained faithful to easel painting with dominant intensive color. She applies the colors in broad brush strokes covering larger surfaces thus constructing an image with prevailing blue and green shades positioning next to them red, yellow, golden and other pure and intensive colors of the spectrum. Placing a certain tone in the first plane, she emphasizes the emotion of the image and defines the observer’s stream of thought.

She skullfully processes the refraction of light in contact with water, thus the visual forms of the kaleidoscope are sensed in her paintings. The play of light and shadow and excellent dealing with different vantage points as well as the use of perspective contribute to the dynamics of the image.

Ivana Živić has integrated her own being into her artwork, her paintings are well thought-out and she is committed to their execution. The cycle of paintings Rooms of Water is constantly and gradually evolving and it is certain that she will achieve completely new visual artwork equally powerful and innovative in following period.

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