ENGLISH VERSION

MOTIF

A man in the community, pulsating with most different experiences, from sensual and emotional to conceptual, is dominant in Dušan Jevtović’s works. Multitude of human figures gathered around a sole event, a ceremony, a funeral, harvest or draught, folk customs or any presentation of terrestrial life, intertwined in friezes and arabesques are portrayed with lively and pronounced gestures. White horses, yellow or red, are prancing along the ruby sky. They symbolize exuberant vitality, dignity, rapidity, rural freshness and freedom. The struggle between the natural and the supernatural and the good and the evil are expressed in the artist’s glowing paintings as an everlasting counterpoint.

There is a whole sequence of short episodes combined in a unique manner, thus making a stable compositional core. ‘Sounding’, rich colours of eternal summer and mid-autumn point to a chromatic and complementary dance, revealing the artist’s inclination to expressionism from the very beginning. His feeling for anecdote and narration, his sensibility of both a fantast and a chronicler will soon identify Jevtović as a dominant figure in Serbian naive art. After a great number of successful exhibitions abroad, this artist will receive the recognition of a great humanist whose works display belief in the humankind, love for a man and the optimism that makes him idealize the scenes from everyday life. The artist takes the task to glorify the unity of people, thus revealing his aspirations to preserve all human virtues and the quality of existence in harmony with nature. Individual stylization of upland landscapes is employed as a stage for the artist to view with boyish eye his reminiscences of childhood.

Although accustomed to visual focus in the lower part, we easily accept the modern concept of spontaneous distribution of visual weight throughout the composition. Gradually developing the idea of placing a huge number of figures in a small area, Jevtović fills the entire surface of the painting with small, organized, episode chunks, well balanced in their weight. If we try to single them out, we will find them unbalanced – only together, they produce a balanced structure of the work. The artist gradually creates his harmonic, tight and homogeneous whole. This specific treatment of crowds in space that properly provide the desired effect achieved by a well-organized form is fascinating, even more for being spontaneous. In addition, a spontaneous desire of the artist to point out the intensity, beauty and virtue of people’s unity adds universal sense to his details.


COLOURS

Poetic treatment of the space is refined by use of warm, sound and gleaming pigments, human figures in frozen motions. The quality of colour in Jevtović’s paintings shows his insight into fictitious, spontaneously abstracted values of tones, their liberations from tone constants, thus revealing the artistic sensibility of the artist. The power of the predominant tone is successfully controlled by balanced combination of coherent colour pigments whose chromatic values achieve specific effects. Complementary relations of pure red, yellow and blue create his sound palette. Contrary to dark and tranquil green, gray and umber tones in his earlier phase, new canvases will ignite with ripened ruby-like flush. The power of the predominant tone emphasizes the intensity of various, freely dancing pigments that create the unique atmosphere.

Like a pivot, red tone of the sky consolidate other elements both compositionally and chromatically, spreading over the entire surface of the composition above the roofs, prancing horses and robes of cheerful village girls. Green is employed as a counterpoint to red. In a complementary flame, its chlorophyll is richly spread over the faraway highlands covered with velvet carpets of grass, thus appeasing colorful figures in action. It bears the power of everlasting spring in that terrestrial paradise of Trnava.

Yellow means ripening. Golden cones of haystacks in the hills, flickering scarves of singing women in the autumn sun on the slopes and the reflection of trumpets of cheerful musicians in the parade create an ideal balance of form and content.

Blue is the colour of an indomitable, barebacked horse that seem to have emerged from the artist’s aspirations to reveal the faraway sights together with the caldrons for brandy distillation and clear pond and giggling of girls from Trnava in it.