Vladimir Veličković

Born in Belgrade in 1935. Died August 2019. Graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade in 1960, he exhibited for the first time in 1951. In 1963, he held his first solo exhibition in Belgrade. In 1965, he won the painting prize at the Biennale de Paris, where he moved the following year. Appointed professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1983, Vladimir Velickovic taught there for eighteen years. In 2009, he created the "Vladimir Velickovic Fund for Drawing", which rewards young Serbian artists. Member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Institut de France. Member of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur.
As a child, he witnessed the atrocities committed by the Nazis in Yugoslavia, and devoted his painting to the representation of the human body, an inexhaustible field of investigation for him. In the early 1960s, he determined the themes that would feature permanently in his work. He painted men or animals (usually rats or dogs) whose bodies were confronted with dramatic, terrorizing situations. Vladimir Velickovic's paintings are disturbing: desolate landscapes, blocked horizons, visions of war and carnage form a macabre, aggressive universe, where representations of the world and the human body are illustrations of the suffering inflicted on man by man.
Vladimir Veličković's work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world, and the painter has received several prestigious awards for his practice of drawing, painting and engraving, such as first prize at the Paris Biennale in 1965. His work has been and continues to be studied by leading art historians, critics and poets such as André Velter, Alain Jouffroy, Jean-Luc Chalumeau, Marc Le Bot and Michel Onfray. Among the many museums in possession of works by the Serbian painter are the Centre Pompidou and the MacVal. A fine retrospective exhibition entitled "Les versants du silence" was devoted to him at the Abattoirs de Toulouse (FRAC Toulouse) in 2011. In 2029, the Fondation Leclerc will devote a retrospective exhibition to his work.