Vladimir VELIČKOVIĆ

Born in Belgrade in 1935. Died in August 2019. Graduated from the Faculty of Architecture in Belgrade in 1960, he exhibited for the first time in 1951. In 1963, his first solo exhibition took place in Belgrade. He then won the painting prize at the Paris Biennale in 1965, the city where he moved to the following year. Appointed in 1983 as a professor at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris, 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 Academy of Fine Arts, Institut de France. Member of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Commander of Arts and Letters. Knight of the Legion of Honor.

As a child, he witnessed the atrocities committed by the Nazis in Yugoslavia, and he dedicated his painting to the representation of the human body, which for him is an inexhaustible field of investigation. At the beginning of the 1960s, he defined the themes that would permanently appear in his work. He paints men or animals (most often rats or dogs) whose bodies are confronted with dramatic and terrifying situations. The discovery of Vladimir Velickovic's paintings is disturbing: desolate landscapes, blocked horizons, visions of war and carnage form a macabre and aggressive universe, where representations of the world and the human body are illustrations of the suffering inflicted on man by man.

Vladimir Velickovic's work has been honored in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world, and the painter has received several prestigious awards for his drawing, painting and engraving, such as the first prize at the Paris Biennale in 1965. His works have been and continue 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 that own works by the Serbian painter, we can mention the Centre Pompidou and the MacVal. A very beautiful retrospective exhibition named « Les versants du silence » was dedicated to him at the Abattoirs de Toulouse (FRAC Toulouse) in 2011. In 2029, the Leclerc Foundation is dedicating a retrospective exhibition of his work to him.