Živko Stojsavljević


Živko Stojsavljević was a Serbian painter.

Biography

He received his first painting lessons in Zadar high school, and afterwards he continued his education in Italy. He lived in Florence and Rome, where he graduated from two prestigious art academies between 1918 and 1924: Royal Institute of Fine Arts in Florence and Higher Royal Institute of Fine Arts in Rome. After returning to his homeland, for a while he lived in Knin; after that, he worked as a professor of fine arts in several towns along the Adriatic coast and in Serbia. In 1931 he settled in Belgrade. He worked as a drawing teacher in many different Belgrade grammar and high schools.
Even as a student, he was interested in decorative wall painting, working alongside his professor, Giulio Bargellini on interiors of public buildings in Rome. He continued painting and decorating interiors of churches throughout his entire career. Nevertheless, Živko Stojsavljević’s s greatest achievements were paintings which depicted lives of peasants and fishermen, coastal landscapes, paintings of Belgrade and its vicinity, as well as places in which he decorated churches, still nature, portraits, and paintings of far away cities. Most of the landscapes were painted in direct contact with nature, under the open sky. In works which depict the view from his studio he achieved the authentic expression – a characteristic combination of still life and landscape. During his career, which spanned over more than five decades, he painted several hundreds of oil paintings and water colors.
He also regularly took part in many group exhibitions: Belgrade Autumn and Spring Exhibitions, ULUS exhibitions and many others. After 1952 he took part in exhibitions organized by the Lada artist association, as well as having eighteen independent exhibitions, first of which was held in 1920 in Florence, and the last in 1974 in Zemun.

Artistic phases

During that period, his work went through several phases: