Sava Sekulić

Paris, Halle Saint Pierre, Turbulences dans les Balkans (7 September 2017 – 31 July)

He participated in independent and group shows in the country (Belgrade, Aranđelovac, Jagodina, Niš, Novi Sad) as well as abroad in significant international exhibitions in: Munich, Paris, Cologne, etc. He received many prominent international awards. For his works he was awarded posthumously at the Fifth World Triennial of Naïve and Marginal Art IN SITA in Bratislava, 2000, etc.). His most significant works are preserved in the collections of Museum of Naïve and Marginal Art - MNMA, Jagodina, Serbia and in Galerie Charlotte Zander, Bönningheim, Germany.

Sava Sekulić (Serbian Cyrillic: Сава Секулић; Bilišane, Obrovac, 17 February 1902 – Belgrade, 26 January 1989) was a Serbian Naïve and Outsider art painter.

He was born in Bilišani in Dalmatinska Zagora near Obrovac, as a Serb in Croatia at the Adriatic Sea coast, in 1902. His mother remarried when his father died when he was 10 years old. Sava Sekulić was raised by his uncle and his aunt. He never attended any schools. His father taught him to read and write. Also, Sava used to quote his father's last words: Learn by yourself, draw and write with a stone in your hand. During World War I, he was harmed and lost one eye when he was 15 years old. He started writing poems when he was 22 and painting in 1932, but he did not dedicate himself to painting exclusively. In 1943, during the World War II he began to work as a builder. Parallel to writing poems, after his retirement in 1962, Sava began to do painting in order to define his poetry more precisely. Sekulić belongs to the group of the so-called outsider artists, lonely, bizarre, asocial people who create new forms of beauty. His unusual associativity and ability for the materialization of his intellectual energy as a complete self-taught was intuitively and instinctively released. He died in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1989.