Coming soon: The exhibition of drawings by Ljubodrag Janković Jale
By: Jasmina Trajkov, museum advisor
Ljubodrag Janković Jale is one of the leading contemporary Serbian artists. He was born in Pirot in 1932, but he spent his childhood in Jagodina, where his parents are from and where he finished elementary school and four grades of the then lower grammar school. As a native artist, Ljubodrag Janković is represented with several paintings and drawings in the collection of the Regional Museum of Jagodina, one of which is a gift from the author himself.
About his childhood in Jagodina, Jale left notes in which he talks about the very beginnings of his interest in art. “My immediate neighborhood was Levach street, in the centre of town, with its countless businesses, grocery shops, bakers, cafés and pottery shops, which, sometime later, caught my special attention…The fascinating shapes of various jugs, pots and ceramics plastic, the glint of the glaze on the ornaments, with their strange figures of warriors and birds, as well as small decorated objects, all thrilled me, like some fantastic scene from a dream. When I think about all this now, it seems to me that my fascination with these creations, consciously or not, spawned my decision to choose my life’s path. Because, when my mother harshly scolded me for swapping something with one of my friends and bringing home a little ceramic cavalryman, which she made me return to him, there was nothing left but for me to make my own cavalryman. That is how I started to sculpt … I remember that I started to draw long before I began going to school – before the slates and slate pencils. I drew portraits of my father and mother on paper, with a pencil, to the general delight of all present, because they were good likenesses.”
He received his first lessons in painting from Ljubiša Petrović, his first teacher who encouraged and supported him in his choice to enroll in the High School of Applied Arts in Belgrade, as well as from Vojin Veličković Vojkan, a painter and his high school teacher.
From 1947 to 1951, Ljubodrag Janković Jale attended the High School for Applied Arts (Department of Graphics) in the class of Professor Mihajlo S. Petrov. Then, in 1954, he graduated from the Academy of Applied Arts (painting department) in the class of Professor Vinko Grdan. He taught as a full professor (on the subject of Act) at the Faculty of Applied Arts in Belgrade until his retirement in 1997.
His work developed over time, and he expressed himself in various techniques: from drawings, through watercolors, oils, graphics, pastels, to terracotta as a form of plastic. His first paintings have dark backgrounds and specific, bony figures. He further explores new contents and forms, changes the attitude towards color and shapes the theme. The atmosphere of hopelessness, austerity and tragedy is changing. Over the years, the morphology of his paintings decreased and altered its form, and the presence of colour and space reduced the intensity of the hopelessness, so that one might say it became a harbinger of great expectations, through a series of horsemen and riders. He further established his thematic circle. The basic ingredients of life: water, earth, stone, man, animals and plants have always formed the basis of his subject matter. The man, that is, the human figure, has a central place in Jale’s field of interest. A woman as a subject, a metaphor for life, has been notably present in his work over the decades.
Art critics pointed out that Jale created a special race while painting monumental female figures, close to prehistoric Venus. They are like sculptures, often fused with the ground on which they stand, with accentuated female attributes – hips and breasts. The artist himself stated that from the earliest days he was accompanied by an affinity for volume, which can be seen in his paintings through a modeled form.
In the collection of the Regional Museum of Jagodina, there are two outstanding canvases of large dimensions, from the beginning of the seventies of the last century. It is a horseman called “Osiris” and an impressive, dynamic composition called “Event on the river”. The remaining two paintings were created in the later period of Jale’s work, where it is clear that the themes remain the same, and that the artist changed his attitude to color and the treatment of the form and space of the painting.
Emotionally attached to Jagodina as his homeland, Jale often exhibited in our city. Preparations for his exhibition of drawings at the Regional Museum of Jagodina are underway. With this exhibition, the Museum will renew its exhibition activity after a long period of pause caused by the outbreak of the corona virus pandemic. We are proud to host this artist and that after the premiere in the Modern Gallery in Valjevo and the Gallery in Pirot, the audience in Jagodina will have the opportunity to see his exquisite drawings. This exhibition was organized on the initiative and with the support of Mića Mihajlović to whom we owe great gratitude.
