The Forgotten Ones

DRAGUTIN CIGARČIĆ (1922–1985), THE LAST BYZANTINE OF SERBIAN MODERN ART
Meditation of a Master
Unjustly marginalized, he painted looking up to medieval icon painters. His color seems to have matured for hundreds of years, the color of the old wall, warm and washed out, fumigated, lean, in collusion with personal and esthetic asceticism. He established a connection between the Middle Ages and high modernism, in the spirit of the Mediterranean legacy of the Balkan culture. He is one of those who returned Serbian visual arts in the fifties and sixties to European streams, after the interruption made by socialist censorship

By: Dejan Đorić
Photo: Gift Collection of Rajko Mamuzić
Reproductions: Collection of Nikola Bogdanović

This text is a memory of a painter, dear man, and refined artist. It has recently been thirty-five years since the departure of a quiet and humble master, Dragutin Cigarčić Ciga (Vranje, 1922 – Belgrade, 1985). Short in posture and great in soul, remote from everyday vulgarity and dignified in his painting solitude, in an ebony tower, with his calmness and almost monastic exemplariness, he introduced his students and conversationalists to the incomprehensible spaces of visual arts.
Cigarčić’s biography is worth of respect, although he had never emphasized anything. He was born in the family of a famous tailor from Vranje Ljubomir Cigarčić and his mother Savka was a housewife. He graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 1946 and then became associate in the State Master Workshop of Milo Milunović, a kind of high-quality postgraduate studies, which many famous painters have passed through. In those post-war years, Milunović was the greatest authority in forming our modern painters. Cigarčić stayed in France as scholar of the French government and scholar of the ”Moša Pijade” fund, a golden support for young artists offered by Tito’s system, which was never repeated in any of the following ones. He participated in study trips to Prague, Paris, Budapest, Venice, Vienna and Rome, but the most visible in his work is the influence of French modern culture. He belonged to the ”Independent” group and ”December Group”, which was particularly significant. It gathered great painters, but was also a state project, opposite to ”Mediala”, the first genuine Serbian underground and opposition, both artistic and political (persecuted in the so-called ”black wave” and otherwise). Cigarčić had three independent exhibitions, all in Belgrade: in 1948, 1956 and 1960. He participated in many group exhibitions in the country and abroad.
Short and agile, he painted excellently until the last days of his life. He did not suffer from the, today popularly called ”metal fatigue”, early descending in quality. Painters lived poorly in the past as well, so Cigarčić was professor in the School of Industrial Figuration in Belgrade. Our review is personally shaded, from firsthand experience, the writer of this text remembers his professor in the popular and extraordinary school of design. He taught drawing and painting in the first year, obligatory for all departments. He never failed anyone, and quickly recognized the most talented ones. He silently corrected them while the works were in progress. In that sense, the lessons were classical and similar to those at the Academy of Arts, since they began from drawing, looking up to antique sculpture. Then they gradually moved to working with color, according to a well-weighed and thoughtfully set up still life, which was grateful for painting analysis from different aspects. He wanted to make a good foundation in his teaching.

MOST WONDERFUL FRUITS OF THE SOUTH

He was an author who worked in a specific manner, deeply respecting tradition, his heritage, in the spirit of the word tradition as transferring, not ossification, but with him, the Middle Ages and fresco painting had a different expression than with his comrades from the ”December Group” – Lazar Vozarević and Aleksandar Tomašević. Discrete and reserved, cautious and wise, he did not allow anything to directly penetrate the painting, everything had to pass his numerous filters of accumulated feelings and experiences. This unjustly marginalized and forgotten master, who deserved to be professionally confirmed, painted looking up to old fresco painters, his color seems to have matured for hundreds of years, directly transferred from frescoes. It is the color of the old wall, warm and washed out, fumigated, so suggestive, ultimately lean, indicating personal and esthetic asceticism, a painter who practiced meditation both in dressing and performance. In that sense, drawer and professor Dragan Lubarda reduced an artistic program in his definition: ”Not lean from greasy, but lean from lean”. That is how Orthodox esthetics and spirituality could be determined in short.
Cigarčić represented the most wonderful and the best of the south of Serbia, the traditional world, humble and reserved. He established a connection between icon painting and fresco painting, the Middle Ages and high modernism, in the spirit of the Mediterranean legacy of the Balkan culture. One should have in mind the ingenious idea of great art historian Stanislav Staša Živković, that entire Serbian art, from Lepenski Vir, Vinča, Greek, Roman and Byzantine influences, to modernism, is part of Mediterranean art. We should remember that Marija Gimbutas, one of the best experts in ancient Balkan cultures, believed that Greek myths appeared based on the myths from lands in the Greek hinterland in the Neolithic. Thus, Dragutin Cigarčić could be called the last Byzantian of Serbian modern art, although such esthetics has lasted until younger artists, but they belong to the postmodern era.
Similar to other painters of high modernism, Cigarčić’s artistic world was created on the heritage of art between the wars, with a correction, move from ancientness, which leading European and American painters are not familiar with. He was one of the artists who gradually but surely introduced Serbian visual arts in the fifties and sixties to European streams in an entirely new way, after the interruption caused by the socialist realism censorship.
Although he applied the then contemporary, actual artistic solutions in his works, it could be said that he was equally interested in heritage as well as the poetics of artistic intimism. Intimism is an old and tough plant in Serbian art, still blossoming today. It has developed from pleinairists Kosta Miličević and Mališa Glišić, to contemporary, young painters. Cigarčić supported the wing of typically civic art of his time and modernized the esthetics of intimism by introducing abstract elements and aspiration to minimization. His best paintings are paying debt to time, Cezanne’s school, and are remarkable with their mythical voice in harmonies of the extremely rich Serbian art.

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In High Modernism
Cigarčić is a remarkable Serbian representative of high modernism, one of the most wonderful and richest periods in twentieth century art. It lasted, relatively speaking, from 1950 to 1980, when a different feeling of the world and entirely different art appeared, for which many wonder whether it could be called art at all.