In depth: art

Mića Popović

Painter and film director, 1923–1996·Belgrade

Painter, writer and film-maker from Loznica, at the heart of Belgrade art for half a century.

By the ULTIMATE Belgrade Editorial Team

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Mića Popović was never content with one way of working. Painter, writer, film director and member of the Serbian Academy, he moved from the first artists’ commune of post-war Yugoslavia through Paris and abstract informel to the sharp, photographic painting of scenes, and stayed at the heart of Belgrade’s art world for half a century.

Loznica and Belgrade

Miodrag “Mića” Popović was born in Loznica on 12 June 1923 and moved to Belgrade with his family in 1927. He began to paint in 1938 with Svetolik Lukić, and in 1946 enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade, in the class of Ivan Tabaković.

In 1947 he went to Zadar with fellow students including Bata Mihailović, Petar Omčikus and Vera Božičković, whom he married in 1949. The Zadar group has been called the first artists’ commune in post-war Yugoslavia; back in Belgrade they were all sent down from the Academy, and only Popović was not readmitted, so he went on studying alone.

Paris and informel

In 1950 he was the first painter in post-war Belgrade to organise an independent exhibition. From 1951 he spent long periods in Paris, where he came to know the painters of the School of Paris, and he held a solo show there in 1953.

From the late 1950s to the late 1960s he worked in informel, the European abstract painting of matter and texture, building heavy, scarred surfaces of paint.

The painting of scenes

At the end of the 1960s he began what he called his last adventure, the painting of scenes: large canvases based on photographs of everyday life, among them a series on guest workers abroad. His essay Painting of Scenes accompanied his show at the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1971.

He was elected to the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, becoming a full member in the 1980s, and died in Belgrade on 22 December 1996.

He was also a film director, making The Man from the Oak Forest, The Swarm, Hasanaginica, The Tough Ones and Burduš in the 1960s and early 1970s, and he wrote books including Sudari i harmonije (1954) and U ateljeu pred noć (1962).

Honours and legacy

He was elected to the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, becoming a full member in the 1980s, and died in Belgrade on 22 December 1996. In 2023 the SANU Gallery in Belgrade showed his work in Mića Popović – The Art of Permanent Rebellion.

In 1989 he gave his paintings to Loznica, where the permanent display of works by Mića Popović and Vera Božičković Popović opened on 28 October 1989 on the upper floor of the Kuća Katića. Since 2001 the town has held Mićini i Verini dani every June in their memory.

Our advice: watch the programmes of the SANU Gallery on Knez Mihailova and the Museum of Contemporary Art for his work, then make a day trip to Loznica on the Drina for the gallery in the Kuća Katića. It opens on weekdays, so check the hours before you go.