Milorad Bata Mihailović

Milorad Bata Mihailović

(Pančevo, 8. February 1923. – Paris, 23. April 2011.)

The beginnings of the artistic biography of Milorad Bata Mihailović provide the following basic information: he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade and left in 1947 to participate in the Zadar Group and the Group of Eleven with whom he exhibited in 1951. He had his first solo exhibition in October 1951, and then left for Paris in May 1952 (together with Ljubinka Jovanović) where he continued his painterly activity, and where he considerably changed his visual language vis-à-vis his previous Belgrade phase. In addition to his participating at numerous group exhibitions between 1953 and 1961 (the year the Noah’s Arc and Daybreak painting were created), he staged in Paris as many as six solo exhibitions. In 1958, he exhibited together with Petar Omčikus, and an American artist Louise Nevelson in the Jeanne Bucher Gallery. He joined the circle of artists gathered around the Ariel Gallery, took part in the atmosphere of spreading abstract painting of the postwar Parisian “School“ in various variants. Both paintings belong to anthological works from the totality of Mihailović’s visual arts oeuvre. They are characteristic for his understanding of painting for which he would say himself: “I have always had a special sensibility for space, which even today is my main preoccupation. And then for light, which portends a certain sense for landscape”. According to these characteristics, Mihailović’s painting of this type and from this period fits into the tendency called “abstract landscapism” (paysagism abstrait), for which the author of this term, and an advocate of the very same concept Michel Ragon (1924-2020) say that “it addresses itself to the nature without describing it. It is not sensitive towards subjects but rather towards the impression which the subjects evoke…”. The Daybreak painting is precisely such a highly emancipated painterly transposition of some indeterminate natural phenomenon announced in its title, expressed by the energy of numerous quick gestural moves, through the action of pure colors and their contrasts, which has achieved an innuendo of a spectacle, instead of a descriptive, primarily sublime and symbolic meaning.

Milorad Bata Mihailovic – Daybreak (1961)<br>oil on canvas, 200 cm x 150 cm

Milorad Bata Mihailovic,

Daybreak (1961)

oil on canvas,

200 cm x 150 cm

Milorad Bata Mihailovic – Noah’s Arc (1959), oil on canvas, 200 cm x 150 cm

Milorad Bata Mihailovic

Noah’s Arc (1959)

oil on canvas,

200 cm x 150 cm

Milorad Bata Mihailovic – Untitled (1955), oil on canvas, 100 cm x 80 cm

Milorad Bata Mihailovic,

Untitled (1955)

oil on canvas,

100 cm x 80 cm