Gallery of the Regional Museum Jagodina
EXHIBITION DURATION: September 12 – October 14, 2019
Author of the exhibition: Jasmina Trajkov
He was born in 1927 in Jagodina, where he finished high school and teacher’s school. He worked as a teacher in Bosnia, and then from 1947 to 1949 he studied at the Higher School of Special Education and Rehabilitation in Belgrade. During his studies, he attended the evening nude school with prominent artists such as Kosta Hakman and Ivan Radović. He was appointed director of the Home for Educated Children in Nova Topola (1949–1951), then worked as a professor at the Teachers’ School in Ljubaška(1951–1953), the following school year he served in Bijeljina, and then, in the period from 1954 to In 1957, he worked at the school for deaf children in Kotor. He returned to Jagodina in 1957 when he took over the position of director of the Institute for Deaf Children and Youth, today’s school “11. May”. He remained in this position until 1976. Due to the needs of the service, he graduated in 1963 from the Higher School of Special Education and Rehabilitation – Deaf Pedagogical Group, and in 1967 he graduated from the Faculty of Special Education and Rehabilitation in Zagreb, deaf group. Trajković was elected director of the National Library “Radislav Nikčević” in 1976. He remained in this position until 1982, when he was appointed president of the Municipal Conference of the Socialist Alliance of Working People. He retired from this position in 1986. He died in Jagodina in January 2012 after a serious illness.
FROM THE OPENING
EXHIBITION CATALOG
Milorad Trajković has one of the prominent places in the cultural life of Jagodina in the second half of the twentieth century as a tireless worker in nurturing cultural life in our city. Although without a formal art education, fine art was his passion and he successfully practiced it for more than sixty years. He is one of the founders of the city’s Club of Fine Artists, its first secretary and long-term president.
He was engaged in art criticism and participated in all important city projects in the field of culture. In parallel with his professional engagement, Trajković also actively painted. His painting opus is rich, with clearly expressed stages in development. He devoted himself more seriously and actively to artistic creation during his stay and service in Kotor. The earliest period of his work was inspired by the greats of Serbian modern painting, Petar Lubarda and Milo Milunović, and consists of expressionist landscapes that, through the motifs of the Adriatic coast, speak of human existential problems, inevitable transience and eternal change of life and death. The culmination of this phase of Trajković’s work are the olive trees and “Wormholes”, symbols of man himself.
Further elaborating on the motif of wormholes and trees, Trajković deals with the motif of the olive tree, whose form he simplifies to the limit of the abstract. Since the mid-1970s, the painter has been inserting zoomorphic shapes within a form that is associated with an olive tree full of holes.
On pastels created in the eighties of the last century, Trajković places the world of animals inspired by the Serbian medieval architectural sculpture of the Studenica and Kalenić monasteries in a field bounded by a line. The color is intense, with the use of complementary colors. Gradually, the composition releases the linear frame and the motif covers the entire surface of the paper.
The artist gradually enriches the world of mythical animals by transferring to his works motifs from Scythian jewelry, which he sometimes combines with intertwined, forceful lines. In this way, he creates monumental, yet dynamic compositions, supported by bright but harmonious colors.
From the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, Trajković began to experiment, approaching in a new way the processing of previously established motifs, performing them in the already characteristic pastel technique. The composition is carried by a disturbed line in which birds and animals are involved. Then the interweaving of lines itself forms figures, among which the most common are cranes, in order to come to a completely abstract play of strong lines and colored fields on some pastels.
A retrospective exhibition of works by Milorad Trajković Pajko shows the development of his artistic poetics, following the basic thread that developed his artistic work. Trajković managed to create a special artistic language and take a significant place in the artistic life of Jagodina. Also, by actively participating in the creation of cultural life in the city, he deservedly found himself among the names that cannot be bypassed during the research and presentation of the cultural history of Jagodina in the second half of the 20th century.
