Nationality Serbian Website [1], [2] | Known for Sculptor | |
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Full Name Bogosav Živković Movement Outsider art, Naive art Died 28 October 2005, Belgrade, Serbia | ||
Bogosav Živković (Serbian Cyrillic: Богосав Живковић; 3 March 1920 – 28 October 2005) was a well-known Serbian naïve and outsider sculptor.
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Biography
Bogosav Živković was born in Leskovac, near Lazarevac, in 1920. As a young man, he was trained in the craft of leather working, and he learned how to sew leather jackets decorated with floral and geometric borders. Due to poor health, he gave up leather working in 1945 and moved to Belgrade, where he found a job as a door attendant. He created his first sculpture in the year 1957 and had his first independent exhibition in 1960. In the domain of naïve and marginal art, he is a recognized world classic. His work is regarded as Art Brut, and has been the central subject of exhibitions in major museums in Europe, as well as in North America and South America. He died in Belgrade in 2005.
Style and work
His inspiring motif was a dream – a large serpent was moving swiftly across a meadow, leaving a slimy track behind, and then, with its tail, caught a stranger dressed in a monk's cowl and robe. The intensity of the dream made him carve his visions in wood in order to release his nightmare. To express himself, Živković used the natural shape of the trunk with or without branches, then smaller and thinner parts of branches, even ivy roots. Natural protuberances and hollows, various gnarls, and the mere mass of the matter inspired the artist to create the most diverse forms.
His chisel followed the natural configuration of the wood, thus liberating, cutting, trimming and shaping anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures, and less frequently animal or architectural shapes. He mostly did relief by which he covered his monumental columns.
With soft modelling of organic forms which did not show acute angles, like unique bestiaries, he erased the borderlines between the material and the form, between the real and the unreal, thus creating a unique atmosphere. Oto Bihalji-Merin, Michel Thevos, Roger Cardinal, and many others wrote about him.
Exhibitions and awards
A great number of his monumental sculptures are in galleries and museums. Some, such as My Home and Dreams and Thought, are in the collection of the Museum of Naïve and Marginal Art (MNMA), in Jagodina. The Magic Garden', in his native village Leskovac near Lazarevac, a temple of his art with many sculptures in stone and wood, reliefs of carved objects, coloured accessory edifices etc. bears best witness to his art. Živković had a number of independent and group exhibitions worldwide, and participated in most significant international exhibitions. Among his awards are Grand Prix at the Second Biennial of Yugoslav Naïve Art in 1983 and Award for Entire Artistic Work in 1991, MNMA, Jagodina, Serbia.