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"For Krstic, the figure (image, form) is the primary fact on which he builds the structure of a painting. Figure, and not appearance! A difficult task, indeed, self-imposed. By a single figure or image, and very often without a logical relation to the background, he presents and expresses his entire thought, intention and experience, the entire complexity of phenomena countless in meaning, which provoke our sensibility. On canvas there is no dialogue of figure to figure, figure to object or, if it exists, it is reduced to minimum." |
Velizar Krstic |
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 SCULPTURES |
ABOUT VELIZAR Velizar Krstic, a painter, graphic artist and sculptor, is a creator of a specific world with a twofold relation toward our time: the world as an idea and as an artistic language; an authentic creative substance which, with its powerful rhythms and symbolic images, opens some new scopes to our sensibility and destiny. We often use certain expressions and ideas from history and theory of art trying to explain subjective contents and emancipation of self, so that a universal concept, highly relevant for theory, could be applied as a fact or a method in relation to a particular art work. Hence, I'll try, without significant support from recent art theory or history ( or at least one of them) to relate to Krstic's painting with my own feeling for it, thus pointing out its character and significance. His painting belongs completely to the world of human ideas, covering the span from eros to thanatos like some large panopticon of images and objects initiating the tragic question about the meaning and the value of human existence. It would be banal to think that his paintings convey only "messages" or that he is a painter of clearly defined and engaged figuration, or aesthetic orientation. It would be difficult to define his art as belonging to a certain trend. His aesthetics is based on the notion of fatality, ominous history of mankind, or perhaps, on synthesis of personal and general experience. Above all, it is based on the need to embody all that into a painting, graphic, sculpture. Krstic's painting only, will be the issue of this study in which I'll try to state some facts and convey certain impressions which reveal his exceptional consistency to a specific art concept, original iconography, function of art and usage of a pictorial language. This consistency has lasted for the past twenty years but it wouldn't be a quality in itself, if it weren't for Krstic's extraordinary sense of unity for vision and media, incorporated in time and personal belief. Devoted to figural expression, from the very beginning, he directed all his explorations toward possible variations of transforming elements of the visible world into the world of ideas, feelings and relations which interpret and reveal his intention as a painter. The elements of his figuration have three essential components equally important for the structure of his painting: motif layer of specific formally-shaped and connotative character (insects, worn out shoes, skinned animals, male or female figure, human head as a portrait or a symbol of human destruction); plastic layer resting on strong matter , dense texture, layers of applied paint expressive in color; technical approach to painting, manifesting dynamic strokes, yet in harmony with previously mentioned components. Sreto Bosnjak
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E-mail: krstic@YUbusiness.co.yu
