Biographical references
1934-1940 Early childhood
Ljubomir Popović, known in art circles as Ljuba, was born on 14 October 1934 in Tuzla (Kingdom of Yugoslavia) in the family of Spasenija, a clergyman’s
daughter, and Aleksa, a well-off merchant, who owned land with an inn and a shop by the road connecting Tuzla and Zvornik. A few days before Ljuba’s birth, King Aleksandar of Yugoslavia was assassinated in Marseilles. Ljuba was
used to saying that his advent had been marked by the black flags of mourning and that his mother, traumatized by the
events, had had an exceptionally hard
delivery. He particularly highlighted the fact that he had been born ‘upside down’.
It was the desire of the woman who had assisted during the delivery that the boy be named Ljubomir, and his parents responded to her desire in gratitude, instead of naming him after his paternal grandfather, as demanded by the Serbian tradition.
Ljuba was a beloved child, but reticent and fearful. His earliest memories were associated with Steva, a father’s domestic worker, who hunt crayfish for him in the nearby brook, as well as with the scary accounts of hajduks told by his father’s barber, and the grave in the garden where his parents’ deceased
baby had been buried. An event associated with the first issue of the children’s
magazine Politikin zabavnik also left a strong imprint in his memory. His father, Aleksa, was a subscriber to the daily Politika, which was delivered by the driver of a Belgrade–Tuzla bus, i.e. thrown out of the bus window, while still driving. One day, a children’s magazine with colour images landed just in front of Ljuba. At that very moment, a path to a whole
new universe opened – a universe that Ljuba would never want to leave.
1941 - 1952 School years in Valjevo
On the eve of World War II, the family
moved to Valjevo (Serbia), escaping the
extermination of the Serbian population by pro-Nazi and pro-independence
Muslims in Bosnia. Many of Ljuba’s maternal relatives were killed and all traces of their existence (houses, graves,
documents, etc.) were erased.
During the German occupation, Ljuba completed the four-year primary school. Classes were held in an improvised classroom, in a tavern. German
officers requisitioned the cosy urban home of the Popović family, leaving to
the owners only one room and a kitchen. The family would never enjoy the comfort of their home because once
the Germans had left, the house was immediately requisitioned by communist dignitaries.
This period of his life was marked by playing with mates and interest in sports, especially football which was
particularly important for him, as well as by his first explorations into the
world of adventure novels and the earliest hints of his drawing talent. Lju-
ba spent almost all of his free time in Zečinjak (Rabbit Warren). This small shed was used for meat drying by Aleksa Popović, whereas for his son this was a place where he tended rabbits and withdrew to read and draw. At that time, Ljuba made his first drawings in the form of comics inspired by the novels he was reading.
As a grammar-school pupil, Ljuba Popović distinguished himself in writing
and painting. He won the first prize at a film criticism contest, leaving behind
Živojin Pavlović, who would become a film director and Ljuba’s close friend.
His first paid assignments were designs for large-format advertising posters for
a cinema in Valjevo. At the same time, he started working as an assistant film
operator in the projection booth. This is how he developed a passionate love for film, which would persist until the end
of his life.
1953-1957 Belgrade, Academy of Applied Arts
Having completed the secondary school as an excellent pupil, Ljuba had
to cope with the fact that it would be impossible for him to continue his education at the University of Belgrade. Except for a public allowance, his family had practically no means: his father, Aleksa, who had lost his fortune during the war, became downhearted and
inert, devoid of any business initiative.
The small amounts of money that Ljuba occasionally managed to earn made little difference to this situation.
Quite unexpectedly, the director of the Sindikat Cinema, Voja Glušac, came to the idea to dispatch Ljuba to Belgrade
as a film selector and agent working for cinemas in Valjevo for a modest salary. At the same time, he was to study at the Academy of Applied Arts and acquire training in decorative painting. The idea was supported by his grammar-school art teacher, Bogdan Bakić, who recommended him to the Rector of the Academy, Branko Šotra. Despite a warm welcome, Ljuba left the Rector’s office disappointed, as entrance exams had already been finished. To avoid
missing the academic year, he enrolled in the Art History course and undertook a drawing course at the art school in Šumatovačka Street. At the faculty library, he discovered the colour
reproductions of the great masters, whereas at the art
school, he practised drawing after a live model, realizing the reality of a nude
human body. He made close friends among some fellow
students who would later become students of the Academy of Fine Arts.
Having successfully passed the entrance exam, Ljuba enrolled in the Academy of Applied Arts in the autumn
of 1954. Initially, he attentively followed
the instructions of his professors but as the time passed, it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to cope with academic drawing and painting rules.
Understanding the form and rendering it on paper with mathematical accuracy were not in line with the painter’s calling emerging in him. He desired to reach beyond the manifest appearance
and filter through his own sensibility that what was throbbing behind it. Following the practice of his colleagues from the Academy of Fine Arts, Ljuba suggested to his fellow students to undertake life-size nude studies and oil painting. The professors were becoming less tolerant to his peculiar individualism but Ljuba, who had already been
inextricably immersed in his artistic calling and stubborn in nature, was not
ready to make a slightest compromise. The breaking point was reached at the beginning of the fourth year of studies,
when he was officially equired to leave the Academy. A shadow of gloomy days was lingering over him. The years at the Academy of Applied Arts were marked by the budding friendship with the future film director and writer Živojin Pavlović, who would
also abandon the studies at the Academy of Applied Arts, pursuing his true
calling.
1957-1959 Belgrade, Academy of Fine Arts
Following the expulsion from the Academy of Applied Arts, a second chance smiled upon him in his career as a painter. Professor Ivan Tabaković,
who appreciated his work and did not agree with the decision, recommended
Ljuba to his colleague from the Academy of Fine Arts, Professor Marko Čelebonović. Ljuba was accepted in Čelebonović’s class, as a student of the fourth year. This exceptional pedagogue supported Ljuba in the pursuit of his own artistic expression, restricting his interventions to occasional friendly advice. At that time, Ljuba had already had a fairly good place for work, which he had found a year before and which he had refurbished with the help of his fellow
students Nikola Rudić and Miša Martinović. That was a spacious hexagonal dome nestled on top of a multi-storey building in Zagrebačka Street, overlooking the Sava River and opening to the sky. Through five upright vertical windows, the beams of yellowish light interspersed the darkness in the studio, creating a curious interplay of shadows. Many paintings made between 1957 and 1959 bear in their titles the reminiscence of the studio: Phantoms of the Attic (1958), Attic Nude (1958), The Green Image of the Attic (1959), etc. The paintings of this period are dominated by the
human figure, often effaced, motionless and confined in an airless space filled with clueless apprehension. His palette ranged between yellow ochre and burnt umber, with occasional hints of red and green shades. At the student exhibition that traditionally closed each academic year, Ljuba’s paintings captured the attention of Leonid Šejka, the founder of the Mediala art group and the creator of its theoretical framework. Šejka’s idea of a synthesis between the Renaissance tradition and modern thought had already earned him the status of a paragon in Ljuba’s eyes and Ljuba was all the more honoured when this charismatic figure, unrivalled in the artistic circles of the
time, promptly told him: “You are one of us”. The following year, Ljuba exhibited two paintings at Mediala’s third exhibition, held at the Grafički kolektiv gallery.
Their friendship, which germinated at that time, fuelled by a strong initiation
element, would end abruptly in 1970, with the death of Leonid Šejka. The presentation of the Urvater collection in 1959 was the first exhibition of Surrealist art in Belgrade. For the first
time, Ljuba was able to see the original works of Salvador Dali, Giorgio de Chirico, Rene Magritte, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst, etc. He was greatly impressed by the originality and quality of individual
paintings but he could not find a single shared feature between the Surrealist
doctrine and his own artistic impulses. A surrealist overtone can only be found
in the personal writings from his youth, which he usually referred to as Temperatura dana (Day’s temperature).
1959-1963 Military service and graduation
Having completed the fifth, i.e. the final year of studies at the Academy of
Fine Arts, Ljuba decided to undertake
additional training for two more years
at a ‘Master’s Studio’. He joined the
studio of Professor Milo Milunović, although he was concerned regarding the
possible influence of this allegedly authoritarian figure on his work. Despite
his reputation of an uncompromising
man, Milunović was supportive of Ljuba’s deeply personal artistic impulses,
limiting his input to technical advice.
Due to this, Ljuba could freely enrich
his pictorial idiom with new forms,
verging between the figural and the
abstract, the organic and the mineral,
the structured and the amorphous. The
paintings representative of this period
are Isabelle and A Banker and His Wife.
At the beginning of the first academic
year, Ljuba made a short trip to Paris,
accompanied by several fellow students, seeking to visit the Louvre, to
walk along the banks of the Seine and
the steep alleys of Montmartre, and to
meet Dado Đurić, his mate who had left
Belgrade three years earlier. Dado’s
intriguing personality had made an impression on Ljuba even before they first
met. Once he saw Dado’s paintings ex-hibited in a renowned gallery in Paris
– the Daniel Cordier Gallery, the seed of
hope that one day he would attain a similar success was planted in his heart.
Following the advice of Professor
Milunović, Ljuba interrupted the special course after the first year to complete his military service. He was appointed to an artillery unit in Bileća, a
small town in the former Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. His
sport experience made it rather easy
for him to cope with the military training. He also worked as a radio operator, practised drawing and even managed to complete several paintings
that he would take to Belgrade, such
as Valediction to the Sublimated Residue,
Cultivating Metal Boxes, and Jon Ihtem.
In the autumn of 1961, Ljuba returned
to Belgrade to resume the course with
Milo Milunović. The return to the Dome,
to his unfinished paintings and to his inner self, stirred in him perplex-
ing apprehension and discomfort,
which could be appeased only
through absorbing work. Having
radically reworked the original
concept, he finished the painting
Saint Sebastian. Only a monochro-
matic overtone, a distinctive mark
of all his paintings since 1957,
was retained. The large-scale
painting The Pilgrims of Emmaus
marked the climax of his predilection for burnt umber. Shortly
thereafter, peculiar pink-reddish
shades would appear, accom-
panied with unsettled, almost
abstract shapes. The departure
from the familiar iconographic
elements and the rejection of the
classical methods of representation was also the departure from
the doctrine of the Mediala group.
From that moment on, Ljuba’s
painting would not conform to
any theoretical system. He recognized
the same state of mind in Dušan Makavejev, a young filmmaker, with whom
he became friends and even took part
in the making of his first film Parade.
1963 - 1964 Settling down in Paris and the first exhibition
During the seven years of study, Ljuba was focused on work and withdrawn into his own world. Having left the Academy, he felt lost. The future was vague. At the same time, there was a growing
desire to expand his horizons beyond
his current artistic expression. In October 1963, he arrived in Paris, hoping
to make a living and settle there for
good. He brought only five rolled canvases: Danaë, Flowering, Isabelle, Istihon, Beauty Salon. A friend found a room, “tiny as grave”,
for him in a shabby hotel in the Passage
des Abbesses. Thanks to a letter from
Marko Čelebonović, who recommended
Ljuba to Ginette Signac, the daughter of
the painter Paul Signac, he made his
first contacts with the Parisian artistic
community. During an opening ceremony at the Creusevault Gallery, Ginette
Signac presented him to René de Solier, art historian and critic, who would
be the first to take an interest in Ljuba’s
work and strive to build his reputation.
De Solier introduced Ljuba to Marcel
Zerbib, the owner of the Diderot Gallery, on Boulevard Saint-Germain, who
purchased the five canvases brought
from Belgrade and decided to provide
Ljuba with a monthly income in return
for new paintings. The difficult period
when Ljuba had been forced to work as
a house painter to survive would soon
be behind him. Yet, he still did not have
a studio. He was drawing sitting on his
bed, with his sketchbook placed on his
knees. For a time, Ginette Signac lent
him a maid’s room in her building on
the Ile Saint-Louis, where he started
working on his first painting in Paris –
The Multiplication of the Bizarre.
Thanks to the support of his new
friends, he was allowed to use the studio of the American artist Ruth Francken, who left for Germany for two years.
The studio was located in 11 Rue Lepic,
and was spacious, well-heated and pro-fusely lit through a large roof
window. In this new space,
Ljuba threw himself into work
with all his vigour. His first
exhibition in Paris was organized already in May 1964.
It took place at the Edouard
Smith Gallery, owned by Marcel Zerbib’s brother Armand.
The instigator of this exhibition was René de Solier. His
name, printed on the invitation card, attracted a large
audience to the opening ceremony, which extended beyond midnight. Along with the
paintings from the Belgrade period, the audience could see the paintings made over the previous months, in
Paris: Little Prince, The Multiplication of
the Bizarre, The Garden of Delights, The
Doors of Paradise…
The paintings from the Paris period
were marked by a more complex and
elaborate structure. Perspectives were
multiplied, whereas shapes oscillated
between compactness and diffusion in
the pictorial fabric. The domination of
warm hues was soothed with the subdued shades of green and yellow and,
less commonly, with intensive ice blue
hues. Once his paintings were publicly
displayed, Ljuba began to meet painters, writers and art critics, such as Patrick Waldberg, an authority on and the
advocate of Surrealism, and Jacques Kermoal, a writer and journalist at Paris Match. The following year, Kermoal
wrote a remarkable article dedicated
to Ljuba’s work.
During 1964, Ljuba also took part in
three group exhibitions in Yugoslavia,
including the Fantasy in the Works of
Modern Belgrade Artists, at the Cabinet
of Prints of the Yugoslav Academy of
Sciences and Arts in Zagreb. The introductory study for the catalogue was
penned by Aleksa Čelebonović.
A significant change was taking place
Ljuba’s private life. He developed a
close relationship with the architect
Nataša Jančić, whom he had met during winter holidays on the mountain of
Kopaonik already in 1955. They married
in 1969 and had two daughters: Adriana
(b. 1970) and Tiana (b. 1978).
1965 Studio at Charenton
In February 1965, Ruth Francken unexpectedly decided to return to Paris, due to which Ljuba was forced to find a new place to work. A friend of Nataša
suggested him to move into an affordable two-bedroom apartment that she
had previously used at Charenton, a
quiet little commune on the outskirts
of Paris. Far away from the circle of
friends who had been constantly present in his daily life for almost two years,
he fully dedicated himself to painting.
The football matches played with his
Spanish neighbours were the only distraction. Early in 1965, Ljuba’s attention was
fully absorbed by the large-scale painting that would later be known as Requiem. The formal and aesthetic, as well
chromatic innovations introduced in
this painting led to a feeling of discomfort, so strong that he had to remove the
canvas from his studio and leave it with
a friend, the painter Bata Mihajlović.
This is a good illustration of Ljuba’s
perplexing relationship with his works.
The painting Herania, from the same
period, was easier to cope with. Its title was inspired by the heroine of the
science fiction novel Out of the Silence by the Australian writer Earl Cox. Ljuba
would later say that for him the painting
was “like a dream of love and immortality”. At the same time, he completed
the painting God
of Illusion, started the previous
year, and undertook to paint
the Last Supper,
reinterpreting
the composition borrowed
from Leonardo
da Vinci’s painting. The same
year, he painted about fifteen
smaller paintings, where he
could give free rein to his inspiration both in thematic
and technical terms. For example, the
background was rendered in tempera
or gouache, while sophisticated forms
were rendered in oil paint.
1966 Montparnasse
In 1966, Ljuba left the studio at Cha-
renton to settle, together with Nataša,
in an apartment in the centre of Paris,
at Montparnasse. The apartment also
served as his studio. However, every-
day life could not be reconciled with his
creative work: he felt that it hindered
his work as a painter, which had always
been vital to him. Few paintings were
painted in this period, but surprising-
ly, their visual power remained intact.
He started painting Ljiljana or the Milky
Way, parallelly with a bizarre painting
named Balthazar. According to Ljuba,
its title had nothing to do with the name
that the members of Mediala gave to a
Belgrade vagabond with the intention of
fashioning him as a symbol of free life.
Severely disheartened, Ljuba also
had doubts about the meaning of paint-
ing. Once again, he felt the urge to seek
answers in a dialogue with the Great
Masters. Accompanied by his friend
Arsić, Ljuba undertook a trip to Gh-
ent to see the polyptych The Adoration
of the Mystic Lamb by Jan van Eyck. A
few months later, a visit to the National
Gallery in London would leave him with
an unforgettable memory: Ambassa-
dors by Hans Holbein. A reproduction of
this painting, with the famous anamor-
phosis of the skull, a symbol of the interconnectedness between the occult
sciences and art, would for long adorn
a wall in his studio.
Marcel Zerbib organized another
solo exhibition of Ljuba Popović, this
time in his own galleries, first at Saint
Germain-des-Près and a month later in
Brussels. A modest booklet was pub-
lished on this occasion. It contained an
introductory essay by Jacques Kermoal,
who wrote: “Knowing Ljuba is like en-
tering straight into a world
of fantasy where nothing is
imaginary except our limited
imagination […] If this world
is sometimes absurd, this is
only so because our way of
seeing it is absurd.”
1967 Studio in the Odessa Passage
Ljuba finally found a studio that perfectly suited him. In fact, it was a
dilapidated and dirty attic and it took
him much effort to turn it into a place
suitable for work. He was attracted by
its size and a glazed roof transmitting
cool light. The atmosphere in this part
of Montparnasse was significantly dif-
ferent from that in the residential ar-
eas where he had previously lived and
worked. The Odessa Passage was a
meeting point of bohemians and young
actors, especially after the establish-
ment of the Lucernaire, a theatre in a
cafe.
After a period of diminished activity,
Ljuba was so overwhelmed with the
creative energy that he started working
on several paintings at the same time.
One of them was Isabelle, a Few Years
Later, which undoubtedly bore a refer-
ence to the painting Isabelle,
made during his studies with
Milo Milunović. This painting,
like many others, deals with
the fragility of the human
body but it also reveals the
resilience of Ljuba’s pictorial
idiom. During 1967, he took part in several
official public exhibitions in Paris, An –
tibes, Montrouge and Belgrade. The
Rive Gauche gallery, managed by R. A.
Augustinci, presented Ljuba’s paint-
ings and prints alongside the works of
Max Ernst, Dorothea Tanning, Henri
Michaud, Wilfredo Lam, etc. at an ex-
hibition entitled 22 peintres d’une fig-
uration autre (22 Painters of a Different
Figuration).
1968 The first large-scale paintings
Throughout the year, Ljuba was ful-
ly dedicated to work. In his new studio,
bright and spacious, he was fully ab-
sorbed with the work on the paintings
started the year before, and some new
ones. The huge painting The Angel of the
Wickedness or the Awakening of Small
Boxes (195×250 cm), later exhibited at
the Salon de Mai in Paris and purchased
by the National Centre for Contempo-
rary Art (CNAC), stood out among them.
The painting exuded vigorous sensuality.
Rounded and soft weightless forms sur-
rounded the central female figure sug –
gesting that the same original magma
begot the entire organic world.
In May, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A
Space Odyssey premiered in cine-
mas. Captivated by this masterpiece of the seventh art, Ljuba drafted, on a
three-metre long canvas, the rough out-
lines of the painting that would later be
known as Divination or Homage to Arthur
Clarke and Stanley Kubrick.
In April 1968, he took part in the ex-
hibition De l’imagination (On Imagination),
organized by R. A. Augustinci at the Rive
Gauche gallery in Paris.
1969 A house on the island of Vrnik
Just like every year, Ljuba stayed in Yu-
goslavia during the summer months. He
met his old friends in Valjevo, whereas
in Belgrade, he spent hours discussing
painting with Leonid Šejka. With the first
hot days, he moved to the Adriatic coast.
The barren vegetation and the blue sky
helped him to relax, to “purge his mind”.
On the island of Vrnik, near Korčula, Lju-
ba and Nataša bought an abandoned
stone house that had once served as
a stonecutter’s workshop. After it had
been thoroughly renovated and expand-
ed, the house became a meeting place
for many Ljuba’s friends from Yugoslavia
and France. They included René de Solier
and his wife Renée Miesse; Anne Tronche
and the writer Philippe Curval; the writ-
er André Pieyre de Mandiargues and his
wife, the painter Bona de Mandiargues;
the publisher Georges Fall; the publisher
and the founder of the Quadrum journal,
Jacques Goldsmith; Gordon Sacks and
Ruth Hofmann, the editors of an Ameri-
can book on Ljuba’s art, etc. In an inter-
view, Ljuba said: “In my life, Vrnik has had
a special flavour and it will always stir
pleasant memories.”
In Paris, Ljuba regularly met René de
Solier. It was still difficult for him to speak French, but the two men did not really
need words to understand and respect
one another. René de Solier introduced
him to Georges Lambrichs, a novelist and
the editor of a book series at Gallimard.
The painting Divination was finished
and exhibited at the Salon du Mai in Paris.
At the same time, Ljuba was working on
several large-scale paintings: Annabella
or the Thirst for Evil, Hibernation, Question
of Hysterical Objects, A Lesson in Alchemy,
City of Bitten Men, Sleepwalker…
In September, the National Museum in
Valjevo organized an exhibition of Ljuba’s
works covering the period between 1957
and 1963. In November, he took part in
the exhibition Signes d’un renouveau sur-
réaliste (Signs of a Surrealist Revival), or-
ganized by Patrick Waldberg at the Isy
Brachot Gallery in Brussels. Ljuba would
later tell to a friend that he had been re-
served about the
exhibition because
deep in his heart he
had not considered
himself a surrealist
artist.
1970 New friends, the birth of the first daughter, and father’s death
AIn the spring, Ljuba took part in an-
other exhibition organized by Patrick
Waldberg, entitled Résonnances sur-
réalistes (Surrealist Resonances). In the
introductory essay for the catalogue,
Waldberg wrote: “It is not insignificant
that Ljuba, through his art, has made
us aware again of the sacred nature of
this world of terror.”
Ljuba finished the paintings Question
of Eternity and Hibernation. He parallelly
worked on a large-scale painting Cre-
ation of Androids, marked by complex
chromatic harmonies. Anne Tronche,
one of the greatest experts on Ljuba’s work, would later say: “colour has here
become syntax. It unites or brings to-
gether the distinct elements of the com-
position”. He also painted Gloria. Placed
in the middle of the scene, an evanes-
cent and milky feminine apparition in-
fuses with its soft light a multitude of
elongated and crystalline elements.
Ljuba was introduced to Alain Jouf-
froy, who was running, together with
Jean-Clarence Lambert, Opus Inter-
national, a magazine supporting the
artistic expression of young artists. In
1970, the editorial board was preparing
a special issue dedicated to Yugoslavia.
On this occasion, Jouffroy wrote an ar-
ticle in which he reunited Dado Đurić
and Ljuba Popović under the title De Da-
do-la-guerre à Ljuba-la-paix (From Dado-
the-War to Ljuba-the-Peace). During the summer, Ljuba made a
short trip to Florence which, for per-
sonal reasons, left a painful memory in
his heart. He noted down: “Even today,
when I think of Florence, the memory
betrays me and I fail to evoke a convinc-
ing image. I see a golden city as distant
from my personal universe as another
planet.”
His first daughter, Adriana, was born
in May. In the autumn, he met Thessa
Herold, who had set up her gallery a few
months before. Their long and fruitful
collaboration started soon thereafter
and it would end with Ljuba’s death, for-
ty-six years later.
Ljuba’s father, Aleksa Popović, died
in September. In December, Ljuba had
to face the death of his valued and ex-
ceptional friend Leonid Šejka.
1971 The first monograph on Ljuba’s art
The series of ‘cosmic paintings’, an-
ticipated the previous year in The Crea-
tion of Androids and the rough outlines
of The Birth of the Cosmic Man, started
to develop. Fuelled by the same inspi-
ration, Ljuba painted Beyond the Star-
gate and The Infinity Ladder. He gradu-
ally abandoned indoor scenes, showing
one or two figures in a confined space,
in favour of spacious and lush scenes.
His pictorial idiom was becoming soft-
er, more flexible and increasingly flu –
id. Impregnated with light and energy,
shapes were relieved of their material
weight, as evidenced by A Room in Flor-
ence, a painting infused with an intimate
atmosphere and moving sensibility.
In October, the Isy Brachot Gallery
in Brussels organized a solo exhibition
of Ljuba’s paintings, where thirty-six
canvases done between 1967 and 1970
were displayed. The introductory essay
for the catalogue was authored by René
de Solier. As a fervent supporter of Lju-
ba’s work, he also wrote an extensive
text that would soon be published as a
book. This was the first monograph in
French dedicated to Ljuba’s work and
also the first monograph dedicated to
a Yugoslav painter published in France.
It was released in December by Georg-es Fall as part of the series Musée de
Poche. On this occasion, Thessa Herold
put on display in her gallery (Galerie de
Seine) Ljuba’s four large-scale paint-
ings. They captured the attention of the
art historian and theorist Anne Tronche,
who openly expressed her enthusiasm.
A few years later, upon the instigation
of Thessa and Jacques Herold, Anne
Tronche would write a remarkable text
about Ljuba’s art for the monograph
edited by Gordon Sacks and published
in New York.
The rich art collector and writer Jean
Davray discovered Ljuba’s work and he
would soon become a loyal purchaser
of his paintings and patron of his art.
Thanks to his financial support, the
ranking of Ljuba’s paintings on the art
market was significantly improved.
The Ambassador of Yugoslavia to
France, Ivo Vejvoda, organized a recep-
tion at his residence in Paris and Ljuba
Popović was invited as a guest, along with Salvador Dali. On this occasion,
the two painters discussed their re-
spective experiences regarding the use
of colours.
1972 A burst of eroticism
A burst of eroticism is the distinguish-
ing mark of the paintings done in 1972.
Women’s bodies with distinct sex charac-
teristics dominate the paintings such as
Venus and Death, Sabra or Homage to Mrs.
Robin, The City of Lost People and others.
Nevertheless, Ljuba persistently denied
any figurative intention and any narrative
that could potentially accompany it. Pure-
ly formal and aesthetic explorations re-
mained the focus of his creative pursuits. As he would say in an interview, twenty
years later, the only real subject of his
painting had always been painting itself.
Upon recommendation from René de
Solier, André Pieyre de Mandiargues vis-
ited Ljuba’s studio in February 1972. A
peculiar friendship sparked immediate-
ly between the surrealist writer and the
painter.
In May and June, Ljuba’s twenty-three
large-scale paintings, made between
1970 and 1972, were exhibited at the
Galerie de Seine. The introductory essay
in the catalogue was penned by André
Pieyre de Mandiargues and René Etiem-ble. Mandiargues wrote: “In addition to
the division into mind- and hand-driven
artists, distinction can also be made be-
tween the painters driven by a warm hand
and those driven by a cold hand, which is
in this case exemplified by the opposition
between Ljuba and Dali, whose ice cold
skill has nothing in common with the ar-
dour that pervades Ljuba’s paintings.”
Through Count Guy de Lahoussaye
Ljuba met the American gallerist Julien
Aberbach, who would organize an exhibi-
tion of his works two years later. In 1972, Ljuba took part in several
group exhibitions in Paris, Brussels and
Skopje.
While staying in Valjevo during the
summer, Ljuba met Slavica Batos, a
young secondary school graduate and
a future architecture student. Ten-odd
years later they would start living togeth-
er in Paris. Their son was born in 1989;
according to Serbian tradition, he was
named after his paternal grandfather,
Aleksa Popović.
1973 Artistic mastery
Ljuba, who truly lived only through
painting, continued to unveil the agitat-
ing impulses under the surface of his
consciousness by exploring the pictorial
fabric. The space in his paintings bent,
multiple visions permeated each oth-
er, shapes conformed to various visual
perspectives. This is especially evident
in the painting Florence, or The Birth of
Melancholy, which he undertook to paint
in 1972, to finish it the following year, as
well as The Sunset or the Lilith Complex,
which showed a similar shifted per-
spective. In the most important painting
of this period, entitled Prayer or The Key
to the Universe, it was obvious that the
calculated distortions of the perspective The exhibition Collection fantôme (The
Ghost Collection) was organized at the
Galerie de Seine with the idea of demon-
strating the lasting vitality of Surrealist
painting, until 1973. Philippe Soupault,
one of the founders of the movement
along with André Breton, was respon-
sible for the selection of paintings and
the introductory essay in the exhibition
catalogue. Ljuba’s painting Lot and a Lo-
tus was displayed along with the works
of Brauner, Camacho, Dominguez, Ernst,
Klee, Tanguy, Miro, Picabia, etc.
In 1973, he took part in group exhibi-
tions in Paris, Brussels, Belgrade and
presented his work in several Italian
cities within the exhibition Surréalisme
encore et toujours (Surrealism, Again and
Always), organized by Patrick Waldberg.
1974 New York
Upon instigation of Thessa Herold,
Alain Bosquet, a French prose writer
and poet of Russian origin, wrote a text
for the monograph on Ljuba’s work pub-
lished by Editions de la Connaissance, a
publisher based in Brussels. This was
the first monograph in a series aiming
to draw attention to the artists who had
gained prominence after 1945. The se-
ries editor was Jacques Goldsmith, the
founder of the journal Quadrum. A book
signing was held at the Galerie de Seine,
where eight paintings were put on dis-
play for the occasion.
The same paintings, accompanied
with another ten canvases, were dis-
played at the Aberbach Fine Arts Gal-lery in New York in September. Despite
the radical contrast between Ljuba’s
pictorial idiom and the aesthetic trends
of the time, the exhibition was unques-
tionably successful. The audience’s re-
ception of his large-format paintings,
including The Temporal Body, Studio, Day
and Night, was spontaneous. The intro-
ductory essays for the catalogue were
written by the American historian of
Modern art Sam Hunter and René de
Solier. Unlike previous catalogues, this
one contained Ljuba’s comments on the
displayed paintings, excerpted from his
diaries. He stayed in New York for sev-
eral weeks, sightseeing and visiting art
galleries and museums. He had no de-
sire to paint, leaving the studio rented for
him by Aberbach desperately empty.
In November, shortly after his return
to Paris, he was painfully struck by the
death of René de So-
lier.
Late in 1974, Lju-
ba was granted the
French citizenship.
1975 The last days in the studio in the Odessa Passage
Once the modernization of the Mont-
parnasse train station and the con-
struction of the business tower reach-
ing more than 200 metres in height had
been completed, the Odessa Passage
was destined for demolition. Ljuba was
forced to leave his studio but the very
thought of it stirred in him severe anx-
iety. Although the paintings from this
period are scarce, his creative power remained intact. Ljuba worked on two
large paintings: Reincarnation (dedicat-
ed to René de Solier) and Cosmic Con-
sciousness, where architectural land-
marks were blurred, giving way to less
structured, evasive spaces. It was also
possible to observe the emergence of
tumultuous stormy skies in his paint-
ings. He also outlined the layout of the
The Beauty of the Day and Lady Tamer
and the Ghosts. The curious painting en-
titled Repulsion (K.E.C.) reveals a fusion
between personal memories and the
ghosts originating from a deeper an-
cestral memory.
Michel Lancelot made a film about
Ljuba’s art for French television as
part of the series Les peintres de notre
temps (The Painters of Our Time). During
the filming, Ljuba began painting The
Beauty of the Devil right in front of the
camera. At the same time, Petar Nedel-
jković made a film about Ljuba’s art for
the Belgrade television. A limited large-format edition con-
taining Ljuba’s seven original prints
accompanied with Jean-Clarence Lam-
bert’s essay Les plaisirs difficiles (Diffi-
cult pleasures) was published by Pierre
Belfond, as part of the prestigious se-
ries Les cahiers du regard.
Anne Tronche undertook to write a
book covering Ljuba’s entire oeuvre as
a painter.
Ljuba met Jean-Louis Ferrier, a pro-
fessor at the National School of Decora-
tive Arts and an art critic. The psycho-
analyst Jacques Lacan visited Ljuba’s
studio.
1976 Anamorphoses and a homage to Goya
In February, Ljuba saw the exhi-
bition Anamorphoses at the Museum
of Decorative Arts in Paris. Since the
Renaissance, this kind of painting,
which could be roughly described as
the reflection of an object in a curved
mirror, had questioned the relation-
ship of the appearance and the real-
ity. Inspired by the exhibition, Ljuba
painted Scream, demonstrating that
even in modern times a painter could
be interested in such eccentricities.
Accompanied by his friends, Ljuba
made his first trip to Spain. He visited
Barcelona, Cadaques, Valencia, Ma-
drid and the Prado Museum and was
strongly impressed by Goya’s painting
Saint Francis Borgia Helping a Dying Im-
penitent. Once back in Paris, he painted
Spring (Homage to Goya), imprinting
on his memory an erotic dimension. At the Galerie de Seine, he exhibited
his drawings and ink wash paintings
and the catalogue for the exhibition
presented his writings, excerpted from
his personal notes – Day’s Temperature.
Together with Botero, Dado, Chavez,
Veličković and Cremonini, Ljuba pre-
sented his works at the exhibition Les
espaces insolites (Unusual Spaces), or-
ganized in Strasbourg by the poet and
art critic Jean-Dominique Rey.
During the summer, André Pieyre de
Mandiargues stayed for a whole month
on Vrnik. In a relaxed and friendly at-
mosphere, he finally had enough time
to socialize and talk with Ljuba. Upon
returning from vacation, Mandiargues
wrote a poem in prose Ode to Ljuba,
evoking his impressions of Vrnik. The
poem was published in the literary
magazine La Nouvelle Revue Française
in 1977.
Ljuba moved to a new studio, in Val
de Grâce Street, where he completed
The Beauty of the Day and Lady Tamer.
1977 Painting a triptych and a trip to Israel
Ljuba worked on several large-scale
paintings for an exhibition at the Beau-
bourg Gallery scheduled for the follow-
ing year. He finished Earth (Moly) and
Fallen Angel and started painting Par-
adise Lost, which would later become
known as Desire II. His personal notes
record the emergence of blue and
purple hues, “icy and soft as a death
shroud”. He also started working on
a huge painting (260 x 400 cm) which,
once completed, would become Hom-
age to Sir James George Frazer.
During a trip to Israel, Ljuba visit-
ed Mount Sinai and the monastery of
Saint Catherine. He was impressed by
the shades of the Sinai desert “ranging
from red to cool pink and grey”.
Philippe Prince made a film about
Ljuba for French television. The film
was entitled Metamorphoses. Alain Bos-
quet’s text served as a poetic thread
linking the paintings. The film has never
been released because of a dispute be-
tween Bosquet and Éditions Gallimard
over copyright.
1978 Love-Monster
In February Ljuba exhibited eleven
large-scale paintings at the Beaubourg
Gallery, held by Pierre and Marianne Na-
hon. The introductory text for the cata-
logue was penned by Anne Tronche. The
very sight of all the exhibited works made
Ljuba feel uncomfortable for “the de-
gree of self-disclosure” in the paintings.
On the eve of summer, Ljuba exhibited
twenty-five large-scale paintings at the
Veranneman Foundation, in a free-stand-
ing building near Kruishoutem in Belgium.
The introductory essay for the catalogue
was written by Alain Bosquet. For the
same occasion, Ljuba painted two series
of small paintings: Ten Little Nightmares
and The Caves of the Unconscious.
He made acquaintance of Anatole Dau-man, the founder and president of the pro-
duction company Argos Films. Upon Dau-
man’s suggestion, the filmmaker Walerian
Borovczyk directed a fifteen-minute film
Love-Monster. During the filming Ljuba
began painting Werewolf and Spring.
Svemir Pavić made the film Ljuba o
sebi (Ljuba on Himself). Some sequenc-
es were captured during the opening
of the exhibition at the Beaubourg Gal-
lery, whereas the others were filmed on
Vrnik during the summer.
Pierre Belfond’s publishing house re-
leased a monograph on Ljuba’s work. It
contained essays written by twelve au-
thors. Jean-Louis Ferrier was the editor.
Towards the end of the year, Jurgis Bal-
trušaitis’s book The Mirror was released.
Although well familiar with Baltrušaitis’s
studies on anamorphoses, Ljuba was this
time struck by the coincidence between
the content of the book and his own ten-dencies to fragment space and create par-
allel universes in which illusion and reality
mingled. In the years to follow, he would
create several ‘mirror paintings’.
In May, Ljuba’s second daughter, Tiana,
was born.
1979 One triptych replaced with another
The three large-scale paintings orig-
inally intended to form the triptych
entitled Paradise Lost were separated
and their roads definitely parted. From
that moment on they would be known
as Desire I, Desire II and Desire III. On
the other hand, three other paintings,
having been partially repainted, were
united into the triptych Homage to Sir
James George Frazer. The triptych was
intended for the main hall of the Sava
Congress Centre in Belgrade. Once it
reached Belgrade, they were partly al-
tered to form a coherent whole.
Ljuba painted The Abyss for the Body,
Night Woman and the diptych Mirror I
and Mirror II. At the International Modern Art Fair
(Foire International de l’Art Contempo-
rain – FIAC), held at the Grand Palais,
the Galerie de Seine dedicated its en-
tire presentation area to Ljuba’s paint-
ings. Six recent large paintings were
displayed, including The Kiss of Death,
dedicated to the gallerist Alexandre
Braumüller, who had committed sui-cide by throwing himself into the Seine.
Braumüller had introduced Ljuba to his
friend Jean Davray, who would enrich
his art collection with many Ljuba’s
paintings.
Michel Lancelot organized the exhibi-
tion Le Musée Volé (The Stolen Museum)
at the galleries Isy Brachot and Galerie
de Seine, in Paris. Ljuba’s paintings
Iceberg and Double Nostalgia were pre-
sented along with the works of Botero,
Camacho, De Chirico, Dado Đurić, Del-
vaux, Magritte, etc.
Walerian Borowczyk’s film Love-Mon-
ster was presented in Parisian cinemas
as a supporting film screened before
Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum.
The art and architecture magazine
Cimaise published an article about Lju-
ba, written by Anne Tronche and ac-
companied with several reproductions.
The magazine Zoom presented Isaure
de Saint Pierre’s interview with Ljuba,
accompanied with colour reproduc-
tions. The magazine Opus International
also dedicated several pages to Ljuba.
The article was written by Henri-Alexis
Baatsch.
Ljuba’s mother, Spasenija Popović,
died in February.
1980 Ice blue
Ljuba made three paintings pervad-
ed by a new ice blue overtone: Ice Age,
Three Points, and The Mountain of Desire.
He believed that they had sprouted from
a cool blue square that had first ap –
peared in The Abyss for the Body, paint-
ed the year before. “Ice crystals” also
emerged in the Crucifiction, the painting
that had already troubled him though
he had just started working on it. To
render the tension of the crucified body,
in the early stages of work, the canvas
was placed horizontally and Ljuba used
images of hysterical convulsions as in-
spiration.
He also took part in an ambitious ex-
hibition organized in New York by Pierre
Cardin – European Trends in Modern Art:
One Hundred Paintings, covering the pe-
riod between 1950 and 1980. The author of the exhibition was the writer and art
critic André Parinaud. Ljuba exhibit-
ed The Games of Love and Death, done
in 1970–1971, owned by Jean Davray,
and several paintings from Galerie de
Seine’s collection.
1981 Crucifiction
Ljuba completed one of his most important paintings – the Crucifiction. This is how he referred to it in his notes:
“This picture is peace and torment, the
pain of the purple precipices, the hys-
terical tension of the man, and the blue
shards of my most beautiful illusions”.
Early in 1981, an exhibition of wa-
tercolours and ink wash paintings was
organized at the Isy Brachot Gallery in
Paris. The catalogue included a pref-
ace by Michel Lancelot and Ljuba’s
text about watercolour. In Pérouges,
in southern France, Ljuba presented
twenty-seven paintings of various sizes
done between 1976 and 1981. The same
exhibition was presented once again, in
October, at the Pierre Cardin Evolution
Gallery in New York.
Gordon Sacks, a New York-based
publisher, released an extensive mono-
graph about Ljuba’s art in English. The
project was initiated and financially
supported by Thessa Herold, whereas
the text was written by Anne Tronche.
The monograph included a catalogue
raisonné of all Ljuba’s works.
The May issue of the magazine Vogue-
homme featured an article dedicated to
Ljuba, written by Isaure de Saint Pierre
and accompanied with photographs by
Alberto dell Orto. The June issue of the German magazine Die Kunst brought an
article about Ljuba, penned by Gustav
René Hocke; it was illustrated with sev-
en full-colour reproductions. The same
article was later included in the book
Malerwelt ab 1900. The Yugoslav literary
magazine Gradac dedicates a double is-
sue (42–43) to Ljuba’s art. The texts were
written by various authors and illustrat-
ed with black-and-white reproductions.
The writer and documentary film –
maker Jean-Marie Drot made a one-hour TV show about Ljuba, as part of
the series L’art et les hommes (Art and
Men). The film was shot in Paris, on
Vrnik and in the Morača Monastery.
In the eight-volume Encyclopédie de
la sexualité (Encyclopaedia of Sexuality),
five pages were dedicated to Ljuba: a
text by Isaure de Saint Pierre was ac-
companied with five reproductions.
In 1981, Ljuba began a collaboration
with the Belgrade gallerist Čedomir
Edrenić.
1982 From The Island of Death to Ecstasy
Ljuba completed the paintings begun the previous year, Love Cages I and Love
Cages II, in which he continued to explore
the duplication of space and transparent
or reflective surfaces. The painting with
a gloomy island in its upper section, orig-
inally conceived as homage to Böcklin,
was transformed into a picture of unbri-
dled eroticism – Ecstasy.
The painting Night Woman, begun
in 1979, which had undergone several
radical changes, was purchased by An-
dré Serval and exhibited at the Grand
Palais as part of the exhibition Le cabi-
net d’un collectionneur (The Cabinet of an
Art Collector).
In October and November, the Marion
Meyer Gallery presented a mini retro-
spective exhibition of Ljuba’s drawings,
watercolours and paintings done be-
tween 1958 and 1982.
After twelve years, the Galerie de
Seine ceased its activities. Hired by
L’Oréal, Thessa Herold became the
manager of the Artcurial Gallery.
1983 The first huge landscape
Ljuba finished three large vertical
paintings (195×160 cm), started in 1982.
After much hesitation, he decided to call
them Sodomy and Gomorrah, The Secret of
Memory and Temptress. Initially, the last
painting was to be reshaped into an elon-
gated trapezoidal format, according to
the desire of André Serval, who had com-
missioned it. While working on it, Ljuba
decided to keep the initial, rectangular
format and to cancel the commission. He
also finished a curious painting showing
a bisexual character, started during the
previous summer on Vrnik, and named it
Saturn’s Dual Face.
Ljuba painted Choking (Hara-Kiri or
Homage to Mishima). The “cold and me-
tallic” hues in this painting surprised
and bewildered him. He also started
painting his first large-scale landscape,
“long-awaited and desired”, with a fe-
male nude occupying the lower half of
the painting. The body would shortly be
covered with a multitude of small objects
(rocks, fruits, flowers) and the painting
would become Burial Place.
In August, the Belgrade gallerist Če-
domir Edrenić organized an exhibition
displaying ten watercolours and ink
wash paintings done between 1980 and
1983 from his own collection. The exhi-
bition took place at the Modern Gallery in Budva, Montenegro.
Ljuba was introduced to Etienne Cha-
ton, a heritage conservation special-
ist working in Fribourg in Switzerland.
Chaton commissioned him to design a
stained-glass window for the church of
Saint Peter Carignan, near Fribourg. The
stained glass image was to feature the
Crucifixion.
Ljube began writing articles on art for
the Belgrade weekly NIN. He signed them
as V. Pop-Ljubojević.
1984 “Man Will never Be God”
A major solo exhibition was organ-
ized at the Veranneman Foundation,
Belgium. The paintings done between
1979 and 1984 were brought together in
three hexagonal rooms. The introduc-
tory essay for the catalogue was written
by Isaure de Saint-Pierre. She wrote:
“Nothing is static in Ljuba’s painting, but
whether the movement reaches out to
heaven or to hell, it is impossible to say.
Likewise, he does not celebrate love
happiness or creative self-satisfaction,
but the dizzying love of someone who
suffers for not possessing the beloved
body, who laments over the differences
that blemish the beings. Man will never
be God. He is condemned to rebuilding
his hell and choosing tumults and fury.”
The distinctly erotic painting Byzan-
tine Ring, done in 1984, was present-
ed at the collective exhibition Art, or et
bijoux (Art, Gold and Jewellery) at the
Vendôme in Paris.
Through Jean-Louis Ferrier, Ljuba
met Jurgis Baltrušaitis, who visited his
studio. Baltrušaitis would include in the
new edition of his book Anamorphoses
Ljuba’s three paintings: Ingrid, Scream
and Landscape, as well as a short ex-
cerpt from the Day’s Temperature.
1985 Water, forests, flying monsters
The painting Burial Place, which took
almost three years of work and reflec –
tion, was finally completed. A new paint-
ing, Lioness was completed fairly quickly.
It shows a female nude, bent like a bridge
over a large stretch of water. Since 1985,
water increasingly pervaded Ljuba’s paint-
ings. This is particularly evident in the
painting Adam’s First Step, where human
figures are tiny, giving the space an im –
pression of immensity. The same propor-
tions may be observed in the large oneiric
composition The Prisoner of Fribourg. This
painting anticipated fantastic structures,
springs, caves, mists and flying monsters
to appear in later works.
In November, Ljuba travelled to Yugosla-
via to attend the inauguration of the Valje-
vo Modern Gallery, founded upon instiga-
tion of Slobodan Đukić, Dušan Mihajlović
and Ljuba
Popović. An
exhibition
dedicated to
Ljuba, cov-
ering the
period be-fore his departure for Paris, marked the
beginning of the Gallery’s activities.
1986 Tenderness and sensuality
The large-format painting Temptations,
started the previous year, was complet-
ed. It was marked by a contrast between
a delicate female figure and an atmos –
phere tainted with threats. Ljuba con-
tinued to paint landscapes showing vast
water surfaces, mist and waterfalls. The
female bodies embodied tenderness and
sensuality. The most important paint-
ings from this period include: Under the
Sign of the Serpent, Study of Tenderness,
Waterfall, The Cool Water of the Doomed
Castle, Disintegration in Time, etc.
A major solo exhibition was organ-
ized at the Richter & Masset Gallery in Munich. The introductory essay for the
catalogue was penned by Gustave René
Hocke.
In November, the Penthouse magazine
published sixteen reproductions of Lju-
ba’s paintings, accompanied with Isaure
de Saint-Pierre’s text Black Romanticism.
Jean Davray’s collection was offered
on auction at Hôtel Drouot in Paris.
Michel Poux, who would become a great
collector of Ljuba’s works, purchased
The Birth of the Cosmic Man.
Separated from his first wife, Ljuba
started living together with Slavica Ba-
tos. Late in December 1986, he travelled
to Amsterdam.
1987 The Children of Hell
Ljuba continued his explorations
into fantastic landscapes, which some-
times featured a female body in the
foreground. He was perplexed over
the rough outlines of a large horizon-
tal painting, perceived by him as “a new
chromatic outcry”. The painting, com-
pleted as late as 1990, would bear the ti-
tle The Scream of a Pink Body. Ljuba also
undertook to paint a large landscape
commissioned by Anatole Dauman but
he was soon overcome by the feeling
of repeating something already seen.
In the middle of the scene, he placed
a black angel, believing that Dauman
would not like the painting, especially
because it was named The Children of Hell. Nevertheless, Dauman purchased
it; the painting would remain in his din-
ing room until his death in 1998. Other
major paintings from this period in-
clude: Under the Sign of the Cross, Fire in
a Pavilion of Love (one of the few paint-
ings in which blue is not dominant) and
Purification. The unusual format of the
last work (138 × 190 cm) is explained
by the fact that it was painted on an old
frame belonging to a painting done in
1959, which had been removed from it
and sent to the Valjevo Modern Gallery.
The March–April–May issue of the
magazine Cimaise brought a twen-
ty-page essay on Ljuba’s art penned
by Jean-Louis Ferrier under the ti-
tle Vers le troisième millénaire (To-
wards the Third Millennium). The text
was accompanied with twenty repro-
ductions, both black-and-white and
full-colour, covering the pe-
riod between 1978 and 1986.
The painting Wound was
presented at the international
exhibition Surrealism, at the
Retretti Art Centre in Finland.
Ljuba visited Fribourg,
where he completed the Cru-
cifixion stained-glass window.
1988 The fiction of the Crucifixion
The work on two large-
scale paintings relying on
an iconography that he had
already mastered, started
in December 1987, progressed rather
smoothly. Once completed, they would
be known as The Labyrinth of the Apoc-
alypse and Temptations Revisited. Ljuba
painted Hysterical Landscape as a recol-
lection of the summer months spent on
the beach Plavi gusar (Blue Pirate) on the
island of Jakljan. The painting originally
bore the title Endangered Nature. In the
painting Forgotten Guillotine, which, ac-
cording to him, evoked “the coldness and
indifference of 18th-century landscapes”,
he strove to “engender a rhythm, an in-
ner movement, that would encourage
viewers to read the painting as a book”.
The painting The Return of Ulysses or
The Wreck of an Idyllic Landscape was
presented at the collective exhibition
Méditerranée, sources et formes du XX-
ème siècle (Mediterranea, Sources and
Forms of the Twentieth Century) held at
the Artcurial Gallery, run by Thessa Her-
old.
The painting Crucifiction was displayed
at the exhibition La passion du Christ (The
Passion of Christ) at the Museum of Con-
temporary Art in Dunkirk. It was only then that Ljuba’s attention was
drawn to the spelling error in
the painting’s title, which en-
dowed the Crucifixion of Christ
with a science fiction overtone.
The publishers Albin Michel
of Paris and Prosveta of Bel-
grade published the French
and the Serbian versions of
the monograph Ljuba, written by Anne
Tronche and originally published by Gor-
don Sacks (Alpine Fine Arts) in New York in 1981
1989 The studio on Jakljan, the son’s birth
The series of paintings focusing on
“water and bodies” was growing. Lju-
ba painted three canvases of the same
format: The Revelation of Truth or Con-
cealed Lovers, The Return of a Person
from the Past and Poisonous Evaporation.
He described them
as “paintings fusing
tenderness and anx-
iety” or as “a roman-
tic idyll threatened
by palpitating fear”.
He laid the first
brushstrokes on a
huge canvas (240 ×
310 cm), nailed to
the wall because he
was still reluctant
to order a frame.
The provisional title
was The White Light
of Death. According
to his personal note,
the emerging painting represented
“the tragedy of disappearance in a white
light, devouring, immaterial and pow-
erful”. Once the painting was complet-
ed in 1990, the title The Enigma of Crea-
tion was written on its back.
The writer Serge Fauchereau and
Philippe Soupault organized the exhi-
bition Voyageur Magnétique (Magnetic Voyager) in Montreuil; it was accompa-
nied with an extensive catalogue. The
painting Under the Sign of the Cross was
displayed.
Ljuba spent the whole June on the
island of Jakljan, one of the Elaphite is-
lands near Dubrovnik, where he signed
an agreement with Milijan Vasić, the di-
rector of the tourist resort, regarding
the construction of his art studio and
its use for a ten-year period. André Serval, one of the major col-
lectors of Ljuba’s works, died in sum-
mer 1989.
Ljuba’s son, Aleksa, was born in July.
On the eve of his birth, Ljuba complet-
ed the painting The Revelation of Truth or
Concealed Lovers.
1990 The devil is in the detail
Ljuba brought to completion the
large-format paintings started over the
past two years: The Scream of a Pink Body,
The Enigma of Creation, Devil’s Caves, and
Transparency after the Body.
Inspired by an idea put forward by
Ljuba, Thessa Herold organized the
exhibition Belvédère Mandiargues (The
Mandiargues Belvedere) at the Artcurial
Gallery to celebrate the 80th birthday of
André Pieyre de Mandiargues. On this
occasion, Ljuba displayed the paintings
Studio (1973–1974) and The Enigma of
Creation. José Pierre wrote the text for
the catalogue.
From June to August, Ljuba stayed in
his new studio on Jakljan, with Slavica
and Aleksa. He noted down: “I found the
balance of body and mind. If ever there
was a period of happiness in my life it
was during the summer of 1990 on Jak-
ljan.” During the summer, he worked on
several paintings, including those for the
FIAC, to be held in the autumn.
Late in October, at the FIAC, the pub-
lisher and gallery owner Michel Delorme
reserved his whole exhibition area for
Ljuba’s paintings. Having seen his paint-
ings under the intensive white light of the
Grand Palais, Ljuba found some hues to
be “crude and harsh” and decided to pay
greater attention to “the enrichment of the fabric” in the future, not neglecting
the smallest detail. He was very satis-
fied with the painting Devil’s Caves.
At the exhibition organized on the
occasion of the fifth anniversary of the
Valjevo Modern Gallery, Ljuba presented
two paintings from the Belgrade period
and wrote a text for the exhibition cata-
logue.
1991 The Last Summer on the Adriatic Coast
Ljuba was elected an external mem-
ber of the Serbian Academy of Sciences
and Arts in Belgrade. He undertook to
write a new series of articles on art for
the Serbian weekly NIN, this time under
his real name. The first article, entitled
Century’s Misfortune dealt with the exhi-
bition of Théodore Géricault’s works at
the Grand Palais.
Ljuba exhibited eighteen large-for-
mat paintings at the Gruyères Castle
in Switzerland. The opening ceremo-
ny left him indifferent. He noted down:
“People are not able to see, nobody is
interested in painting.” In Geneva, at
the Art Bärtschi Compagnie Gallery, he
exhibited his watercolours, ink wash
paintings and drawings in ink.
A war broke out in Yugoslavia. The
summer resort on Jakljan, which housed
Ljuba’s studio, was deserted. Ljuba,
Slavica and Aleksa stayed alone on the
island with a Croatian family, that of the
resort’s guardian. They took the last
flight from Dubrovnik to Belgrade to re –
turn to Serbia.
In Paris, Ljuba painted a small paint-
ing entitled My Walk after Death. His sil-
houette, easily recognizable in the mid-
dle of the painting, is surrounded by a
cloud of “white and dense light”. André Pieyre de Mandiargues died
on 13 December. Ljuba was deeply af-
fected by his death as he had lost both
a great supporter and a valued friend.
1992 Beauty and evil
This was a period marked by doubts
and anxiety. As always, Ljuba sought
refuge in his work. The work on the
painting started towards the end of 1991,
named Nightmare, proceeded slowly and
perplexingly. “A woman’s body in ten-
sion. A bridge between our underground
passions and a landscape of death, with
a sea and dark islands. A strange mani-
festation of beauty, evil, ugliness, chaos.”
On another canvas of the same format,
the body is raised. Its face reflects as –
tonishment. The final title of the first
painting would be Nightmare I, Homage
to Füssli, whereas the second would be
called Nightmare II, the Awakening. He
also painted A Landscape with Volcanic Dust, “dedicated to a secret love”. Upon
starting to paint The Big Picture of Evil,
he noted down: “I find the painting very
beautiful. Yet, evil is present, I do not
know where exactly.”
Ljuba was one of the painters cov-
ered in the Dictionnaire de l’art moderne
et contemporain (Dictionary of Modern
and Contemporary Art), published by the
Editions Hazan; the entry was written by
Jean-Clarence Lambert. Among other
things, he wrote: “Ljuba has developed
his own style, between fantasy and
mannerism, dream and reality, the im-
aginary and the conceptual.”
Having lost his studio on Jakljan, Lju-
ba stayed, for the first time, in the small
Greek village of Xiropotami, near Mount
Athos, where he painted Athos, the Holy
Mountain. He stayed for two days in the
monastery of Hilandar.
1993 Sun’s Death
Faced with a tide of disturbing news
reaching him from Yugoslavia, Ljuba
painted Sun’s Death, “as an anticipation
of the explosion”.
The Sombor-based publishing house
Zlatna grana published a book dedicated
to Ljuba. An unpublished text that René
de Solier had written in 1971, and had
given to Ljuba just before his death, was
deciphered, typed and translated to be
published in this book. It was accompa-
nied with Ljuba’s drawings. In the book Le
théâtre de l’âme (The Theatre of the Soul),
Alain D. Valade dedicated the chapter Lju-
ba ou la volonté de création (Ljuba or the
Will to Creation) to Ljuba’s art. After nine years at the Artcurial Gal-
lery, Thessa Herold decided to estab-
lish a new gallery, this time at Marais,
near the Picasso Museum. Along with
Camacho, Matta, Mušić, Saura, Zao
Wou-Ki, Ljuba was part of the inaugu-
ral exhibition Au rendez-vous des amis
(A Friends’ Meeting). The introductory
essay for the catalogue was written by
Pierre Daix.
Invited by Jacques Mousseau, a for-
mer editor-in-chief of the magazine
Planet, Ljuba stayed in Tataouine in Tu-
nisia. The vacation in Xiropotami ended
in a perilous journey through Macedonia
and Kosovo to reach Buljarica (a sea-
side village in southern Montenegro). At
the end of the summer, he stayed with
the art collectors and friends Draško
and Branka Milićević.
1994 Black romanticism
Ljuba completed the painting Sun’s
Death and embarked into the phase of
“black romanticism” with three some-
what smaller paintings of the same for-
mat: The Joy of a Non-Existent Space, Dead
Peacock’s Garden (where black lightning
revealed his desire to paint storms and
disasters) and Vanished World.
In the spring, Ljuba’s paintings were
displayed at the exhibition Hantises
(Hauntings), organized by Guy Bärtschi,
at his gallery in Geneva. The exhibi-
tion featured works by Bacon, Bellmer,
Brauner, Matta, Saura, Veličković, etc.
In the autumn, a solo exhibition was or-
ganized at Guy Bärtschi’s gallery. The
exhibition catalogue included an intro-
ductory essay and
several poems by
Jean-Clarence Lam-
bert. The book Sym-
bolism by Michael
Gibson was pub-
lished in four lan-
guages by Taschen.
It contained a repro-
duction of Ljuba’s
painting Temptations
Revisited.
In the issue dedi-
cated to the craving
for love, the literary journal Poésie published Ljuba’s draw-
ings and watercolours, accompanied
with texts by Alain D. Valade, André
Pieyre de Mandiargues (Ode to Ljuba)
and Patrick Grainville.
Ljuba spent another summer in Xiro-
potami. He painted on canvas nailed on
the wall or fastened to it with a strap-
ping tape, in the room that served as a
studio, living room and a kitchen.
1995 The Abode of Ghosts
Ljuba continued the work on a very
large horizontal painting, the title of
which was beginning to take shape. In
this stage, The Abode of Ghosts seemed
to be a suitable title. Ljuba felt that the
painting was beginning to “belong to
him”, that he had managed “to creep
into it, to inhabit it, to identify with it”.
He also noted: “In the past, I would get
rid of my torments by placing them on
canvas. Today, I am looking for a refuge
in my paintings, peace for the soul.” The
diptych Soko Grad revealed a new, dif-
ferent light, which Ljuba described as
“a battle between yellow light and white
heat”.
In Paris, he took part in the exhibi-
tions Figuration – Configuration in Paris,
organized by Jean-Louis Ferrier at the Lavigne-Bastille Gallery, and Figuration
de l’imaginaire: du Réalisme fantastique
à l’Art visionnaire (Figuration of the Imag-
inary: from Fantastic Realism to Visionary
Art) at the gallery of Franca and Pierre
Belfond. In Belgrade, the Verica Art Gal-
lery organized a collective exhibition
displaying the paintings of Dado Đurić,
Vladimir Veličković and Ljuba Popović.
The essays in the catalogue were writ-
ten by Živojin Pavlović and Branko Kukić.
Two documentary films dedicated to
Ljuba were made by Ilja Slani and César
Sunfeld.
Ljuba was introduced to Sarane Alex-
andrian, a writer and theorist of Surre-
alism. Several years later, Alexandrian
would write the text for a major mon-
ograph about Ljuba’s art published by
Cercle d’Art.
The year was marked by health is-
sues. Two surgeries resulted in ex-
haustion and depressing thoughts.
1996 The naivety of times past
Five large-scale paintings done be-
tween 1972 and 1976 were exhibited at
Thessa Herold’s gallery. The catalogue
included an introductory essay by Alain
D. Valade and Ljuba’s comments on
each of the exhibited paintings. At the
opening ceremony, Ljuba was aston-
ished by “the naivety of the paintings
and the steel determination in execut-
ing them”. In October, he took part in
the group exhibition Black List at Thes-
sa Herold’s booth at FIAC, where he
displayed Night Tales, Homage to E. T.
A. Hoffmann. The collective exhibition
Metaphysics – Still Life, organized at the
Valjevo Modern Gallery, was instigated
by Ljuba. The introductory essay for the
catalogue was written by Živojin Pav-
lović.
During the summer, in Greece, he
painted several medium- and small-
size paintings. Once back in Paris, he
put the last touches to the Garden of
Love under Surveillance, started on the
island Jakljan in 1990, and completed
White Cloud, The Secret of the Pink Di-
amond and The Awakening of Demons,
while continuing the work on the large
painting The Death of a Maiden, which
was at that time filled with dark and
threatening flying objects.
1997 The Death of a Maiden
Ljuba started painting a new
large-format painting, where the cen-
tral section was occupied with a wom-
an’s body, tormented and chained,
immersed in a cloud of white-hot parti-
cles. Already at this stage, the creative
process got stuck and could not pro-
gress. He placed the painting The Death
of a Maiden next to it, “so that they help
one another”. The Death of a Maiden was
then subject to a radical change: “the
maiden with luxuriant yellow hair and
wide-spread breasts” was concealed
under a cloud of flying objects and
creatures, killing and burying her, in a
pictorial sense. Ljuba parted, with regret, with the
painting Ishibor, Homage to Beliaiev,
which he considered his metaphysical
self-portrait. Ishibor (or more precisely,
Ichthyander) was the hero of one of the
favourite science-fiction novels of his
youth, Amphibian Man by the Russian
writer Alexander Beliaev. Ljuba painted
twelve small paintings under the com-
mon title The Wanderings of a Shadow,
as well as several paintings for an ex-
hibition at Thessa Herold’s gallery, due
in 1998. One of them was Hindrance to
Eternity, a painting executed with cold
perfection stirring in him a strange
feeling, “as if it had been painted by
someone else”.
In Belgrade, the journal Itaka dedi-
cated an entire issue (270 pages) to Lju-
ba’s paintings and drawings.
1998 Endgame
The year was marked by two major
exhibitions. In Paris, Thessa Herold
presented in her gallery twenty-four
recent paintings, twelve of which were
painted specifically for this exhibition.
The introductory essay for the cata-
logue was penned by Alain Vuillot. In
Belgium, at the Veranneman Founda-
tion, two exhibition rooms were ded-
icated to Ljuba’s work. In Belgrade, at
the Verica Art Gallery, two large-for-
mat paintings, Sun’s Death and The Big
Picture of Evil, were displayed.
In the Greek village of Xiropotami,
where he was spending his seventh
summer, Ljuba rented a new house
with a shed at the edge of the court-
yard that served as a studio. He paint-ed Endgame (Beckett), showing “the joy
of deliverance, the celebration of the
abandonment of mundane materiality”.
In the autumn, he started working on
the large-scale painting Ghost Ships and
Time Tombs, relying on familiar icono-
graphic elements: bodies, intensive light,
skeletons, crumbling, dispersion, etc.
The Surrealist literary magazine
Supérieur inconnu published an inter-
view with Ljuba, made by Alain Vuillot,
a young philosophy teacher. The inter-
view was based on their conversations
at Ljuba’s studio.
The Valjevo Modern Gallery organ-
ized an exhibition of Čedomir Edrenić’s
collection. Ljuba’s thirty-odd paintings
were displayed alongside paintings by
Šejka, Dado, Samurović and others.
Towards the end of the year, Ljuba
lost one of his best friends, the Serbian
filmmaker and writer Živojin Pavlović.
1999 Tombs for history
The work on Time Tombs was pro-
gressing well. At that time, Ljuba was
reading Hyperion, a science fiction novel
by Dan Simmons, and The Mystery of the
Cathedrals by Fulcanelli. He discovered
a “splendid correspondence” between
the ideas of the famous alchemist and
his own universe. He noted down that,
thanks to Fulcanelli, he began to grasp
the fundamental difference between
Gothic and Renaissance art. In April,
the painting Time Tombs (Dan Simmons)
was completed and “commended to the
history of the 20th century”. Ljuba’s text
Vers les cryptes du temps (Towards Time
Tombs) was published in the October–
December 1999 issue of the journal
Supérieur inconnu, dedicated to the fin
du siècle. Ljuba’s drawing was featured
on the front cover of the issue. An exhibition of Ljuba’s works on pa-
per (small-scale paintings in oil on paper,
watercolours and drawings) was held at
the La Hune-Brener Gallery, in Paris.
The anthology of modern and con-
temporary art L’aventure de l’art au XX-
ème siècle (The Adventure of Art in the
20th Century) by Jean-Louis Ferrier was
published. It included a text dedicated to
Ljuba’s art – Le monde fantastique de Lju-
ba (Ljuba’s Fantastic World), and a repro-
duction of the painting Venus and Death.
The hotel chain Novotel commis-
sioned a drawing that would later be
reproduced in lithography, in sixty cop-
ies. In exchange, Ljuba was awarded
with a free family trip to the Cape Verde
Islands. In October, he travelled to Bel-
grade, where he saw, for the first time,
the damage caused by the 1999 NATO
bombing. In December, he travelled
to the island of Reunion in the Indian
Ocean, upon invitation from Jacques
Mousseau. Ljuba was introduced to
Michel Poux, French indus-
trialist and art lover, who
would become his friend
and a major collector of his
paintings.
2000 The Secret of the Red Door
Ljuba completed the painting Ghost
Ships, to which he gave an alternative
Serbian title – Tajna života posle smrti
(The Secret of the Afterlife). In the cen-
tre of the painting, he placed a skele-
ton, with a head similar to his own. This
macabre self-por-
trait is surrounded by
crumbling cathedrals,
ghost ships, enchant-
ed forests, a figure
emerging from the
underworld, a female
musician playing on a
femur bone, a beloved
woman from the past,
a crystalline hall…
He believed that this
was his first paint-ing reaching out to him from the Other
World. Another painting, The Secret of
the Red Door, terrified him so much that
he believed it had evil powers.
Ljuba took part in the exhibition
Phantastik am Ende der Zeit (Fantasy at
the End of Time) at Erlangen–Nürnberg
University, Germany, and in the group
exhibition Un regard de Bernard Noël
(A View of Bernard Noël) at Franca and
Pierre Belfond’s gallery.
The literary journal Phréatique pub-
lished on the cover of issue no. 93, ded-
icated to language and creation, a re-
production of the painting Salome. The
issue included a text about Ljuba’s art
written by Raymond Beyeler.
Ljuba’s friend and collector Jova Obra-
dović died.
2001 Deliverance through paintings
Ljuba kept on changing two large paint-
ings started in 1999. In one stage of the
work, he saw them as The Signs of Heaven,
whereas in the other, they were Lolita of
Light, Dante’s Women, Lucifer’s Kingdom…
Who are the women emerging from dark-
ness? – he wondered. Why do their bodies
radiate light? Is this the glow of Hell?
Ljuba was terrified over the rap –
id march of time and the decline of his
earthly existence. He wondered: “Is my
deliverance through paintings really en-
sured?”
He completed sixteen small paintings
for the special, limited edition of a new
monograph dedicated to him. The title
L’errance d’un esprit fatigué (The Wander-ing of an Exhausted Spirit) was identical
to that of a painting done in his student
years. It “sounded shocking” in 1959; in
2001, it “sounded logical”.
He took part in the exhibition Autour
de la revue Supérieur Inconnu (The Circle
of the Journal Supérieur Inconnu), held
at the Visitation Chapel at Thonon-les-
Bains (Haute-Savoie). Ljuba also de-
signed a poster and the invitation card
for the exhibition. The journal published
the reproductions of The Secret of the Red
Door, which was displayed at the exhibi-
tion, and Endgame. He also took part in
a group exhibition at Franca and Pierre
Belfond’s gallery.
In February, Ljuba spent two weeks
on the Cape Verde Islands. In Greece, he
finally found a comfortable house with
a studio, where he could isolate himself
and work in peace.
2002 A Dream of Flying
Ljuba put the final touches to the
paintings started in 1999 and they were
ready for varnishing. The final titles
were The Abyss for an Angel and Darkover.
He took part in the exhibition San o
letenju (A Dream of Flying) at the Museum
of Applied Arts in Belgrade, organized by
the Yugoslav Airlines, and the collective
exhibition Victor Hugo et les artistes con-
temporain (Victor Hugo and Contemporary
Artists) at Chamalières (France), where
he displayed two old paintings: Cultivat-
ing Metal Boxes and Out of the Cocoons.
In Paris, on FIAC, Thessa Herold put on
display one of his recent paintings.
2003 Shadow and Light
The opposition between the forces of
light and darkness, already apparent in
his works painted since the early 1990s
(The City of Souls, The Death of a Maiden,
Black Pulsations, Darkover), was intensi-
fied. He painted the large-format paint-
ing Shadow and Light and The Return of
the Black Angel, which was somewhat
smaller and which he clearly defined as
a painting “between heaven and hell”.
A major retrospective exhibition of
Ljuba’s works was organized in Subot-
ica (Serbia). About a hundred paintings,
done between 1953 and 2003, were
brought together and displayed under
the title Ljuba ili Prizivanje svetlosti (Lju-
ba or the Evocation of Light). The intro-
ductory essay for the catalogue was
written by Milenko Radović, an expert
on Ljuba’s life and work.
The monograph Ljuba was published
by the Cercle d’Art. It placed the accent
on the works from the previous two
decades. The text was written by Sa-
rane Alexandrian.
The Serbian national television, RTS
– TV Belgrade, produced and presented
a 90-minute show entitled Umetničko
veče: Ljuba (Art Evening: Ljuba). The pre-
senter Zorica Pantelić then produced
another show, Ljuba Popović’s Light and
Shadow. A close friendship was born between Zorica Pantelić and Ljuba and
it would last until Ljuba’s last days.
Ljuba and Michel Poux made their
first trip together, to Seychelles. The
practice of travelling together to tropi-
cal areas for a week or two during win-
ter would continue over the following
years.
2004 The history of heads
At the Valjevo Modern Gallery, Lju-
ba organized an exhibition dedicated
to cut-off heads. The previous year, he
painted A Contribution to the History of
Cut-off Heads specifically for this occa –
sion. Giant heads would soon take an
important place in his painting. Their
mouths would be often wide open, sym-
bolizing “the mouth of hell”, which drew
and swallowed tiny human figures. He
finished the painting Facing Darkness.
When the monograph Ljuba by Sarane
Alexandrian was published, Thessa Her-
old organized, at her gallery, a presenta-
tion of the book and a small retrospec-
tive exhibition of works done between
1973 and 2003.
In Belgrade, Ljuba started his col-
laboration with Živojin Ivanišević, the
founder of the gallery Umetnički prostor
Pariski Klub.
In March, Ljuba undertook a short trip
to Israel, to the Dead Sea.
2005 The Dream of Poisonous Flowers
In Paris, at the Rambert Gallery, a
one-painting exhibition was organized:
the large-scale painting (230×300 cm)
The Dream of Poisonous Flowers, start-
ed the previous year, was put on display.
The introductory essay for the catalogue
was written by Michel Ellenberger. In a
note made a few days after a very suc-
cessful opening ceremony, Ljuba wrote:
“This is not my dream, this watercolour
with a dominant bluish hue and red
pricks of evil. This is the acid taste of poi-son exuded by each creature confronted
with the inevitability of vanishing”. The
same year, he finished the paintings
Miraculous Séance and The Whiteness of
Tomorrow (dedicated to Živojin Pavlović).
In Belgrade, Ljuba took part in the ex-
hibition organized by the gallery Umet-
nički prostor Pariski Klub on the occasion
of the publication of the book Pariski
krug [Paris Circle] – Ljuba, Dado, Vladimir
Veličković, Miloš Šobajić.
Ljuba was introduced to Pierre Mahieu,
the greatest collector of his drawings.
2006 Large format
Six Ljuba’s paintings were displayed in
Belgrade, at the gallery Umetnički prostor
Pariski Klub. The exhibition was organized
on the occasion of the publication of the
monograph Veliki format (Large Format).
The text Čarobnjak iz doline milosti (The
Magician of Val de Grâce) was written by
Milan Komnenić. The latest paintings
stirred in Ljuba a strange feeling that he
was estranged from them.
Ljuba was more and more fatigue. He
felt that his body was “plotting against
him”. The recovery from a knee surgery
was difficult, but he continued to paint
regularly, as before. He noted down that
for him, painting was “a source of energy” that brought him “back to himself”.
Ljuba finished the painting Collapse,
which would soon be acquired by Michel
Poux.
2007 The Expulsion from Paradise
Last touches were put to the large
painting entitled The Expulsion from
Paradise. Establishing a balance be-
tween pale blue and pink hues was
truly a challenge. Satisfied with the re –
sult, Ljuba noted down that this paint-
ing might be his testament. At the same
time, he was working on other, smaller
paintings, which had temporary titles
(Blue Sphere, The Masts of Invisible Ships,
Metallic Tears, Eclipse…), seeking, as
usual, “to establish a balance between
daylight and subterranean nausea”.
In Belgrade, he took part in the ex-
hibition Gistavu Morou u čast (Homage
to Gustave Moreau). Ljuba was the in-stigator of this exhibition organized at
the gallery Umetnički prostor Pariski
Klub. Two paintings, Homage to Gustave
Moreau and Orpheus’ Lost Accords, were
painted specifically for this occasion.
He also instigated the exhibition Sim-
bolično u srpskom slikarstvu (The Sym-
bolic in Serbian Painting) at the Valjevo
Modern Gallery. Branko Kukić was the
author of the exhibition and introducto-
ry essay for the catalogue.
Ljuba undertook another trip to the
Seychelles with Michel Poux. The sum-
mer holiday in Greece was dedicated to
rest and painting.
2008 A very personal hell
Ljuba finished the painting The Signs of
the Deluge, started in 2006. The whiteness
of the canvas that has here and there re-
mained intact creates the impression of
vigour and clarity in the central section
of the painting. Heads and tiny flying
creatures, symbolizing lost souls, are
emerging from the shadows surrounding
a crystalline city. At the same time, he
completed another large painting, Lost
Souls, started in 2007. The third large-
scale painting, the first outlines of which
had been laid down on Orthodox Christ-
mas Day (7 January), was completed very
quickly. ”Something exploded like a boil.
The canvas opened as hell and got filled
with nasty creatures, flying or falling in
an abyss.” In his personal notes, Ljuba
explained that this was a very personal
hell, and not the Bible Hell. Towards the
end of the year, he would start working on
two large paintings focused on the same
topic, Invitation to Hell and Innocence and
Diabolical Forces.
In the TV show for the Serbian nation-
al television Moć slike: razgovor sa Ljubom
Popovićem (The Power of Painting: a Con-
versation with Ljuba Popović), he was in-
terviewed by Jasmina Simić.
In February, he made a two-week trip
to the Seychelles. During the summer,
he stayed in Xiropotami.
2009 Planetary mission
Michel Poux, who had already had a collection of thirty-odd works by Ljuba,
commissioned a huge painting of the
same size (260×400 cm) as the central
piece of Homage to Sir James George
Frazer (1978). The canvas was stretched
on the frame in September and the first
strokes were laid down a few days later,
while the canvas was still in the horizon-
tal position. Ljuba noted down that the
theme would probably have to do with
the end of the world, the Apocalypse,
the Antichrist’s arrival… possibly a walk
after death. Ljuba wondered whether he
would be able to bring it to completion.
He was worried over his health, as
the recovery after a knee replacement
surgery was difficult. Despite joint pain
that often prevented him from working,
he painted persistently, because paint-
ing was the only thing that made his life
meaningful – his “planetary mission”. Ljuba finished a very sensual paint-
ing, Innocence and Diabolical Forces, and
then another one, Invitation to Hell. As
planned, both paintings were purchased
by Michel Poux. Sleepwalk II was taken
to Israel, whereas Evaporation, Opening
of the Abyss and The Abyss for Unknown
Objects ended up in Belgrade. At same
time, he made two square paintings, en-
titled Invitation to Hell I and Invitation to
Hell II, in which he revisited one of his
favourite scenes: giant heads whose big
mouths, wide open, were actually the
mouth of Hell.
Ljuba also took part in the exhibition
Portret između realnosti i imaginacije (Por-
trait between Reality and Imagination), or-
ganized, based on his idea, at the Valje-
vo Modern Gallery. The same exhibition
was later presented at Umetnički prostor
Pariski Klub in Belgrade.
On 11 September, Sarane Alexandrian
died.
2010 A Walk after Death
The large painting with the provisional
title Antichrist’s Arrival became My Walk
after Death and the work progressed
well. Ljuba repeatedly changed the face
of one of the central figures because he
could not harmonize it with the overall
atmosphere of the painting. For him,
this painting was “the last planetary
howl before the final darkness”. Nev –
ertheless, he also noticed that the dark
areas in the painting were still sparkling
with stars. The universe was eternal,
not humans.
Ljuba finished the painting The
Uniqueness of Demonic Action on the Body.
Acquired by Michel Poux, it would form
a diptych with Innocence and Diabolical
Forces. With a seemingly intact vigour,
he painted several smaller canvases:
Blue Mask and Its Visitors, Pyramidal Love,
Submerged Love, The Castle of the Last
Hope, Black Castle, The Allegory of the
Soul…
In Serbia, at the Valjevo Modern Gal-
lery, an exhibition of Ljuba’s drawings
was organized to commemorate the
publication of the book Ljuba: drawings,
1952–1962, written by Milenko Radović.
2011 Is there an afterlife?
Over the year, Ljuba was mostly fo-
cused on finishing the details of a large
painting, the final title of which would
be Is There an afterlife? The five central
figures retained the vigour from the
initial stages of work, except for one
face, which was blurred after repeated
changes. Ljuba would not touch them
any more. These figures seem to rep –
resent all the states of a body between
life and death. The body in the middle,
bright and airy, might symbolize a rising
soul, leaving behind a feeble and per-
ishing body, and a stiff corpse under its
feet. He started to populate the periph-
eral areas of the painting, immersed in
darkness, with little demons, torment-
ed souls, skulls, grinning heads, vari-
ous fantastic creatures… Ljuba was
not religious. What he said and wrote
seems to reveal the following idea of an
afterlife: if there were life after death,
it could be attained, for a time, through
paintings only.
During the first half of the year, Ljuba
worked on the paintings The Inventory of
Bizarre Objects and Sorcerer.
The Queen of Fire (two towers in flame),
The Mouth of Hell, The Island of Lost
Heads, The Beauty and a Robot, Ruin in
Flames, and a series of small canvas-
es were painted in Greece, during the summer. The opposition between the
body-light and the evil forces of dark-
ness was frequently present in these
paintings. Giant heads were depicted
on several canvases.
2012 A painting in a castle
The painting Is There an Afterlife? was
finished, varnished, dismantled from
the frame and sent to the commissioner
and the future owner, Michel Poux. His
castle was being reconstructed at the
time. Once the reconstruction had been
completed, the Assy Castle hosted the
biggest private collection of Ljuba’s
works, mainly large-scale paintings.
Although distraught over parting
with his “testament painting”, Ljuba
continued to paint. During summer, in
Greece, he started working on several
paintings, which would get their defini-
tive form in Paris: Rolla’s Destiny (Hom-
age to Henri Gervex), Metamorphosis, The
Master of Lost Souls, Invasion before the
Deluge, Saturn’s Head…
The milestone of the year was the collective exhibition dedicated to Dada
and Surrealist painters Chassé-croisé
Dada-surréaliste, 1916–1969 (Dada-Sur-
realist Mess, 1916–1969). The exhibition
was instigated by Georges Sebbag, who
also wrote the introductory essay for
the catalogue.
2013 A year without large formats
This was one of the rare years when
Ljuba did not paint any large-scale
paintings. He worked on several paint-
ings around one metre in size (162×130
cm): The Fiancées from Hell, White Smoke,
Metamorphoses, etc.
In Belgrade, Ljuba took part in the
presentation of the book Ljuba: slike iz
privatnih kolekcija (Ljuba: paintings from
private collections). The book included
essays by Nikola Kusovac, Sreto Bošn-
jak, Milan Komnenić and Dejan Đorić
and was published by the gallery Umet-
nički prostor Pariski Klub, which also
organized an exhibition of Ljuba’s paint-
ings reproduced in the book. The Valjevo Modern Gallery displayed
one of the most beautiful private collec-
tions of Ljuba’s paintings in Serbia, that
of the Ćurković family. The texts for the
catalogue were written by Ljuba Popo-
vić and Nikola Kusovac.
2014 Hasty, more expressive
Starting with 2012–2013, Ljuba’s art
revealed the traits of a “modernism”
due to the hasty, more spontaneous
and more expressive rendering. This is
evidenced in the paintings Woman-Owl,
The Invasion of Blue Objects, The Beauty
in a Metallic Wood, Tears under the Sun,
Bestial Love, etc. The focus was always
laid on woman’s body, bright, shame-
less, threatening and, at the same time,
threatened. Skulls and heads with hor-
rifying expressions were present to the
point of becoming the only subject of the painting, e.g. in The Tower of Cut-Off
Heads.
Ljuba took part in several group ex-
hibitions in Valjevo and Belgrade. The
gallery Umetnički prostor Pariski Klub
and the Serbian publisher Paideia pub-
lished a book that contained the repro-
ductions of Ljuba’s works and selected
texts about his arts.
The painting Mystery in Full Light was
displayed at a one-painting exhibition in
Valjevo. The catalogue brought the de-
tails of the painting and a text by Alain
Vuillot.
A quiet summer in Greece was
marked by interesting discussions with
Nikola Kusovac.
2015 Macabre and romantic
Faithful to the hasty and expressive
manner and mostly macabre subjects,
Ljuba painted The Mirrors of Forgot-
ten Ghosts, Evil Forces, Dance Macabre,
White Moon, etc. Styx-River and The Se-
cret of the Red Sea, which reveal mel-
ancholy and romanticism interspersed
with anguish, were the only exceptions.
He undertook to paint the large-scale
painting The Empire of Satan.
Eleven large paintings were displayed
at the RTS Gallery in Belgrade. The in-
troductory essay for the catalogue was
written by Ljuba’s friend and expert on
his art, Milan Komnenić, who died three
months after the opening of the exhibition.
On the day of the opening, a presentation
of the monograph Ljuba: selected works,
1953/2015, published by Pariski krug, RTS and Službeni glasnik, was organized. It fea-
tured selected texts by various authors.
Four Ljuba’s paintings were displayed
at the exhibition The Collection of Draško
Milićević.
Zorica Pantelić’s show Vreme (je) za eli-
tu (The Time [Is] for the Elite) entirely ded-
icated to Ljuba was aired on the Serbian
national television, TV RTS, in December.
Anne Tronche, art critic and theorist,
Ljuba’s friend and the author of a re-
markable essay published in a mono-
graph about his art, suddenly died in Oc-
tober. Deeply affected by her death, Ljuba
dedicated to her the painting Antinea.
2016 The last paintings
Early in 2016, during a visit to Lju-
ba’s studio, Thessa and Jacques Herold
came up with a proposal to organize
an exhibition of his works at their gal-
lery, just before the summer break. The
paintings were already prepared and it
only remained to complete The Empire
of Satan and refine a few details in the
others. The exhibition was opened in
June. It was dedicated to Anne Tronche.
Her text Ljuba: le monde des tables et
des souterrains (Ljuba: the world of ta-
bles and basements), taken from the
book Chronique d’une scène parisienne
(Chronicle of a Parisian Scene, published
by Hazan), was included in the cata-
logue, along with Mathilde Marchand’s
text about Ljuba’s art and an essay by Thessa and Jacques Herold dedicated
to Anne Tronche.
After the opening, Ljuba left for
Greece. As usual, he started working on
several paintings immediately upon ar-
rival. However, the work was disrupted
by health problems. His condition be-
came complicated and he was urgently
transferred to a hospital in Belgrade.
He died on the night between 11 and 12
August. For the first
time, his studio in
Val de Grâce Street
in Paris was empty
in September.
