Ljubomir Popović, Serbian surrealist painter, Died at 81

  Artists

Ljubomir “Ljuba” Popović was born on October 14, 1934, in Tuzla, Bosnia and August 12, 2016.

He was a Serbian surrealist painter.

He was a renowned for his many erotic and unconventionally juxtaposed subject matters.

Ljubomir Popović studied Fine Arts in Belgrade.

While taking a visit to Paris, he was impressed by the discovery of 1959 exhibition of surrealist art from the Urvater collection.

During the 1960, Ljubomir Popović founded the movement “Mediala” meaning ‘Honey and Dragon’, to express concepts of desire and fear.

He arrived in Paris in 1963 and was immediately taken in by French gallerists and surrealists.

Whilst he resided in Paris and supported by the Thessa Herold’s gallery, he painted fantastical scenes, full of disturbing and desirable creatures, reminiscent of Dali’s work, according to a Mandiargues’s review in 1970.

He was inspired by Renaissance and Baroque painting, as well as his grandfather’s exorcisms, Popović’s works deal with the demons of a dark pessimism.

Ljubomir Popović is the topic of the short documentary film L’amour monstre de tous les temps (1978) by Walerian Borowczyk.

He had resided in Paris since 1963, occasionally visiting Serbia.

During July 2016, while in his summer retreat on the Athos peninsula in Greece, he got sick and was transferred to a Belgrade hospital.

Ljubomir Popović passed away at 81 years old.