John Botica

Life

Botica was born in Belgrade, Serbia in 1953 and most of his life he was involved in tennis, being a tennis professional. He has lived in United States and Germany and has settled in New Zealand since 1997. In 2004 he was able to discover his true passion,. namely pebble mosaic art establishing a completely different and innovative approach to this ancient art through bold usage of Maori and Polynesian motifs so common to his adopted country of New Zealand. "John Botica caught the pebble mosaic bug when his uncle gave him a book on this ancient art. John was already an accomplished mosaicist, using bright ceramic tiles, and he was instantly intrigued by the textures and patterns that could be created using only natural pebbles". Botica has been involved in many private, and public commissions, hi has created what is considered, in the specialist publication Mosaic Art Now, one of the world’s top 100 contemporary mosaic works. Botica’s ‘Tree of Life’ was commissioned by the North Shore City Council and installed at a children’s playground in Greenhithe, with the latest public project at Bastion Point, in Auckland, which is arguably one of the most important sites in recent New Zealand history.

In 2013 the St. Frajou Painting Museum, Haute Garonne, France, presented the preparatory drawings for the mosaics by Botica. In 2013, he also participated in National Mosaik Art Exhibition : Magic of Mosaic: Mosaic Symposium 2013 in the Helen Smith Meeting Room, Pataka + Museum, Auckland. Botica is member of Mosaic Association of Australia and New Zealand and founding member of Art Resilience movement created by Ksenia Milicevic in 2014 in Paris, France.

Public projects

John Botica has created mosaics for some notable New Zealanders including Peter Jackson, Anita Finnigan and Bruce Aitken.