Author: Ana Klikovac
Art scene in Montenegro has always been abundant with ingenious voices whose art speaks volumes and crosses continents. Here are a few that caught our eyes!
Ina Martinović
Ina Martinović is an inspiring artist with a degree in sculpting. She is skilled at communicating her thoughts and emotions through her sculptures. Ina believes that giving your thoughts the shape, structure and charactes is is the greatest bliss all artists can have. Martinović is determined not to give up on the body. "The thought is what separates us from the body and connect us to another body. In order to have a body, I am going to sculpt my thoughts", shared Ina.
Hana Mirkov
Hana Mirkov is an artist with a degree in painting, received in Cetinje. She has participated in numerous collective and independent exhibitions, in Montenegro, Serbia and abroad. Hana's specific artistic approach has been noticed and praised not only in her country, but also abroad. Each of her pieces features a valuable event, legend, a particular part of town, tradition, situation or a universal importance. She keenly observes the world around her and transfers it on canvas in the boldest, brightest and the most beautiful shades of red, blue, orange, green and yellow.
Zorica Lakić
Zorica Lakić, known as the wall painting pioneer is also the owner of a "Žižo mural" studio where her mural ideas have a freedom to thrive. She strives to provide a harmonious and beautiful atmosphere through the murals she creates. Zorica's murals embellish a variety of places from caffes, restaurants, hotels, to schools, children's playrooms and kindergartens all over Podgorica, Budva and Nikšić.
Hajdana Kostić
Hajdana Kostić is a drawing artist and graphic designer specialized in applied photography. Her drawings are in private collections around the world - USA, Japan, England, Austria, France. She designed public art solutions for the capital of Montenegro. She organized three big charity exhibitions where all the funds went to poor families and Psychiatric hospital in Montenegro. Among her work, project 365 is the one that undoubtedly stands out. She managed to create and post one drawing every day on social media not only for 365 days but 800 days in a row. She began that project when she met notable Swiss photographer Yvan Rodić who inspired her to go deeper with her art.
Zoran Krulj
The artwork of this surrealist painter with a degree in architecture has gained a massive following and praise all over Montenegro for its brightly colored paintings featuring whimsical characters set at the seaside of sunny Boka Bay. Krulj's art is divided into three movements- the first one being tied to the Mediterranean, to Boka Bay, Herceg Novi, is filled with Mediterranean light, positivity and humor. The second one realistically leans towards the expression and the monochrome, representing an homage to its profession. The last cycle is completely absorbed by the fantastical.
Jelena Pavićević
Jelena is a Podgorica-based artist with a degree in sculpting which she gained at FLU in Cetinje. Her signature sculptures, molded out of terracotta, give off anthromorphic elements, as well as mythical and archetypal suggestions, where material practically becomes the temperament of created shapes. That loyalty to the material- clay, as such, is derived from knowing that its nature emits and incites those deeply pressed remains of primacy, rusticity and mysticism of its structure. Jelena's tendency is to provide the possibility to deform the archaic shapes.
Maja Šofranac
Maja Šofranac is an artist with a degree in painting which she received at the Academy in Cetinje. Her work contains a range of drawings, installations and video content focused on social commentary. Šofranac's 2018 exhibit titled "Imuno – sistem" questions the dehumanization of the contemporary world, in addition to meditating on the symbiosis between the man and technological devices. Insisting on awakening individuality, which she observes as the single immune system needed in the fight against the mechanized reality, she calls the attention to the human duality as a physical and spiritual being, giving the precedence to its spirituality.
Ranko Maraš
Ranko Maraš is a Kotor-based photographer whose experience spans nearly a decade. The most common inspiration for Ranko's photography is the scenery of Boka Bay, through which he successfully discovers new facets of the beautiful Montenegrin Bay. Although his photography is not intended for commercial use, within it lies a distinguished artistic range and Ranko's engagement in presenting the rich cultural heritage of Montenegrin seaside.
Milutin Obradović
Milutin states in his biography "I was incredibly lucky to be born in a beautiful country which, considering it from the present point of view, could have only existed in fairytales. Its name was the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Ten years after my birth it dissolved and I had to move my life to a new state called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It didn’t work either. Then I moved to the third one named Serbia and Montenegro. Now, finally, I live and work in the fourth called Montenegro. All my life, my hometown Bijelo Polje and I have been changing states but still have stayed in the same place, equally away from Belgrade, Berlin, Beijing… Cetinje is the town where I finished the Secondary Art School and later graduated from FFA in 2002 in professor Karailo’s class."
Nina Vukčević Čupić
Nina Vukčević Čupić is born in 1976 in Bar, she graduated in 2003 Faculty of Fine Arts in Cetinje, where she also received her master's degree in 2010 Painting department, in the class of Professor Branislav Sekulić. She teaches fine and visual arts at the Gymnasium "Slobodan Škerović". She exhibited at several solo and group exhibitions in Podgorica, Kotor, Cetinje, as well as in Greece and is a participant in the Traditional Exhibitions of ULUCG from 2004 to 2015.
"I, Nina Vukčević, offer you a game. Here and now. Yesterday, today and tomorrow. Time does not play a role here. I don't care about name, who you are, your age... I take you through the world of imagination, my city and your city, small and big, with color."
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