DRAGAN ĐURIČIĆ
Dragan Djuricic
Jeram
Jarani
Girl
Still life
Portrait
He was born in 1961. in Bogatić. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in 1988. years. Died 6. June 2003 years.
Painter of the plains and the human soul
Poor beggars, sleepy drunkards, old-fashioned faces, chaste beauties with swollen breasts, knights made of opan, emerge in the June heat around the bier of a sleeping portrait painter, eternally in love with classic realistic, figurative painting, unforgettable baroque masters Rubens and Rembrandt. The knees of his peasant woman who has loaded a heavy basket of corn, and the play of light on the Drina beach creates a beautiful figure and shape of the bather. Out of the sweltering heat emerge old apprentices, knitted balloons of plum wine, flintlock flintlock rifles and holsters. For a moment, rotten pears, rotten yellow quinces, ripe custard apple and axinka, as well as the forgotten salty, sloppy, and thickets of the homeland flash by.
Lovers of Impressionism, in which the artist occasionally looked for inspiration, remain silent. The people of the silent procession cannot come to terms with the inescapable fact. Dragan Đuričić, the academic painter of the great Serbian plain and the human soul, suddenly and silently passed away in the Lord.
Daybreak on June 6, 2003. in Šabac hospital marked the sad end of the artist’s life at the height of his creative power. His premature departure is a great loss for Serbian art, according to his contemporaries. A tear falls on the wrinkled face of Radomir Torbica, a retired art teacher at the Bogatić elementary school. He remembered the old days of the seventies and his student, a chubby boy, in love with colors, whose works he exhibited to art lovers in Paraćin. The members of the jury shook their heads in disbelief, claiming that it couldn’t have been painted by a fifth grader. It was already clear to the excellent pedagogue that he had in front of him a future student of the art academy and a great painter.
The extraordinary talent of Dragan Đuričić impressed Sergej Jovanović, whose painting school he attended before his studies. The best in the class of professor Vojislav Todorović, he was delighted with the study trips to Paris and the famous Louvre. In the temples of world art, observing the greatest achievements of the human spirit in fine arts, he builds his own style. He graduated from the painting department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 1988. in the same year he entered the selection of “Perspektive”, a group of painters organized by the gallery near the theater. Solo and group exhibitions are held in Belgrade and other galleries in Serbia. Mačvani become proud of their artist, and he repays them many times over with paintings, exhibitions… The famous Milić of Mačva included him among the four most famous portrait painters in Serbia.
He finds models in his Mačva, and the most inspiring to him are old people, whose faces speak of the difficult existence under the blue sky of the Mačva plain. The artist wants to maintain, confirm and preserve that world for all time. For him, it is a world of spiritually rich people.
Dragan Đuričić deeply experienced his work. He worked studiously and precisely. From his artistic workshop came pictures of timeless value, which ennoble the human soul, wherever they are. He wanted and could have done much more, but his untimely death prevented him from achieving it. His paintings remain, as descendants, (because there is no other) and a significant trace of the artist of a small town in Serbian painting.
(Ljubiša Đukić, “Glas Podrinja” 6/23/2003).
Memory of the portrait master
Great artists and masters of their craft, during their lifetime, are rarely noticed and not appreciated by the people and the environment in which they live and create, as they deserve, especially their creativity. Only when they leave the mundane world, they will be understood and valued in the right way. Dragan Đuričič, an academic painter from Bogatić, fit into this cliché.
If it is the fate of artists that their birthplace does not recognize them as they walk the earth, then it is, at least to some extent, a righting of injustice when they return to their works among the living. After a little more than three years since his sudden and premature death, his paintings were shown at an exhibition held in the Youth Center in Bogatić, reminding us that one of the best portrait painters of Serbian painting was born, lived and created in this place.
The framed figures of Mačva peasants, young men, girls, old men…, meadows with hay bales, Drina willows and boats… reminded me of the painter who left for eternity in his 42nd year. suddenly and silently, at dawn on June 6, 2003. years.
Radomir Torbica, art teacher at the Elementary School in Bogatić, although seriously ill, came to admire his “discovery”. He sent the first works of his pupil in the fifth grade to an art competition and confused the members of the jury who did not believe that they were the work of a 12-year-old boy. Later, that boy became an academic by painting a paper for the entrance exam in less than an hour, which required at least a week. “From the first” he received the index of the Faculty of Fine Arts.
After his schooling, he returned to Bogatić, where he lived modestly, honestly, inconspicuously, bohemianly like all the great masters. He had his circle of friends, his place in the “Embassy” with Slobodan Simić Šulja, his favorite night out with Rada in “Lipovo Lado”… Befriended Miko Puzić and his accordion, school friend Obrad the “dentist”, Đok Petrović, Maro Pejdić… He painted, exhibited, helped young painters at art colonies.
Unfortunately, an extremely normal, simple and ordinary, but at the same time experientially rich and creatively fruitful life ended when it was not time for it. The paintings created in his studio are the only posterity he left behind.
Dragan Martinović, an academic painter, said that he didn’t know Dragan Đuričić as well as his closest friends, and he sincerely regretted it, barely managing to hold back his tears. Master Miki Puzić’s knees buckled as he put the accordion on his shoulders, and his fingers slowed down as he played “Kad umoran bum pao”, one of the painter’s “favorite” tunes. He couldn’t say anything after her.
Actor Branislav Ković spoke excerpts from “The Immortal Song” by Miroslav Antic, and actress Jelica Đonlić reminded of Đuričić’s short life and rich creativity with a text that was published after his death that sad June in the newspaper “Glas Podrinja”, penned by school friend Ljubiša Đukić.
With more than 50 works collected from private collections and a modest legacy preserved by his family, Dragan Đuričić came alive among his fellow citizens with this exhibition. The charge of artistic spirit radiated by the exhibited paintings, emotions, respect, made this tribute organized under the auspices of the municipality, a unique event, and yet a modest return of debt to the best academic painter of the younger generation who grew up in Bogatić.
(D. Grujić in the newspaper “Glas Podrinja” on the occasion of the Municipal Day exhibition, September 2006).