Jovan Soldatović

Jovan Soldatović (November 26, 1920 – October 7, 2005) was a Serbian and Yugoslav sculptor, internationally recognized for hundreds of sculptures and memorials. He was one of the most prominent modern Serbian sculptors, a leading artistic personality in contemporary Novi Sad and a member of the Prostor 8 art group from Belgrade.

Private life

He was born on 26 November 1920 in Čerević. His family moved to Novi Sad in 1930, in the area of Little Liman, near the location of future Banovina Palace. He graduated from Jovan Jovanović Zmaj Gymnasium in Novi Sad in 1939. In 1940 he finished to Officer´s School in Maribor and starts his studies in the architecture department in the Technical Faculty of the University of Belgrade. With the start of World War II in Yugoslavia he would stop his studies in Belgrade and move back to Novi Sad. He participated in World War II as a member of Yugoslav partisans 7th Vinkovac regiment. In 1945 after the war he would marry Mila Mrazović. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 1948. On 3 July 1948, his first son Srđan was born. On 18 March 1956, his second son Goran was born. Some time in his life he would divorce his wife and marry his second wife Mirjana. Both of his wives would tragically lose their lives in 1999 (Mirjana in June due to a car accident, Mila in August from natural causes).

Soldatović died on 7 October 2005 in Novi Sad and was buried at a cemetery in Čerević.

Career

On 9 November 1949, he would start working at Toma Rosandić workshop in Belgrade along with Ana Bešlić, Olga Jančić, Sava Sandić, Ante Gržetić and Ratimir Stojadinović.

He would work in Toma Rosadnić workshop there until 1953, where he would move back to Novi Sad. There he would become the first professor of sculpture at the painting department of the Teacher Training School. At the same time, he is leading the initiative to establish an art studio at the Petrovaradin Fortress and is among the first to establish his studio space in the so-called building Duga kasarna (Long barracks). Soldatovic will work in the studio for more than half a century, until his death in 2005. Around the same year he would become a member of the Udruženja likovnih umetnika Srbije ULUS and then a member of the Udruženja likovnih umetnika Vojvodine ULUV.

First exhibited in 1949. He had several solo exhibitions in Belgrade (1952) and Novi Sad (1958, 1968, 1999, 2002). He participated in a number of joint exhibitions by The Applied Artists and Designers Association of Serbia, the Association of Art Artists of Vojvodina, Prostor 8 in Belgrade (1954), the Mediterranean Biennale in Alexandria (1955), World Exhibition in Brussels (1958), the Fifth International Biennale of Sculpture at the Open in Middelheim in a park near Antwerp (1958), First NOB exhibition of Yugoslav artists in Belgrade (1961), Second International Exchibition of Sculptures in Musée Rodin of Paris (1961), Second NOB exhibition of Yugoslav artists in Belgrade (1966), the October Salon in Belgrade (1970), Third NOB exhibition of Yugoslav artists in Belgrade (1971) the Salon in Rijeka, the Triennale in Belgrade, and several representative contemporary exhibitions such as those in Sremski Karlovci, Kovilj, Sombor, Zagreb, Kikinda, Petrovaradin, Slavonski Brod and Negotin.

He was a member of the "Prostor 8" (Space 8) art group. In the period of 1957 and 1958, Soldatovic was the main promoter of a sculpture exhibition in the free space of Group 8, at Tašmajdan Park in Belgrade and at the Petrovaradin Fortress in Novi Sad. Since then, sculptures of Soldatović, Aleksandar Zarin, Ana Bešlić and Ratimir Stojadinovic have been permanently placed at the fortress. The exhibition is the beginning of Soldatovic's obsessive idea to turn the plateau at the Petrovaradin Fortress into a place to exhibit sculptures.

In 1968, Soldatović set up a monumental exhibition of his sculptures at the Petrovaradin Fortress. The exhibition was dedicated to the Year of Human Rights and was held under the auspices of UNESCO. On that occasion, Soldatović established a correspondence with U Thant, the then Secretary-General of the United Nations. More than 50,000 visitors attended the event, including the Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito.

In 1972, he works on establishing and organizing the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, which emerged from the Training School. There he would become an associate professor of the arts in 1975. In the 1981 re-election Academy of Arts, he was nominated for a permanent professor position. Because of his relationship with the collective, he was not accepted even as an associate professor. He would then accept a national pension.

In 1985, Soldatović would move to his new and final workshop at the Petrovaradin Fortress, behind the Academy of Arts.

In 1994, Soldatović was nominated for academic membership at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. The reasoning was written by Milan Konjović since November of 1990, but was not accepted. Two sculptors, Svetomir Basara and Nikola Janković were admitted to SANU on 13 October 1994 instead.

During the NATO bombing of Novi Sad in the period of 24 March to 10 June 1999, Soldatović would regularly work in his workshop. Even after the bombing and the destruction of all three bridges across the Danube, he would travel to his workshop ether by ferry or by boat. He would open up an exhibition at the ruins of the Varadin Bridge on 14 April, at the height of the intensive bombing of Novi Sad and Yugoslavia. The exhibition opened in front of the Novi Sad Club by Dr Aleksandar Lučić.

In 2001, on the occasion of the 80th birthday of Jovan Soldatović, a formal reception was held at the Assembly of Vojvodina by the then president Nenad Čanak.

In 2002, on the 50th anniversary of his first independent art exhibition, Soldatović would again exhibit at the Graphic Collective Gallery in Belgrade, also displaying some of his new works.

In 2003, thanks to the engagement of Gallery BEL ART and the gallerist Nabuko Akikawa from Japan, the sculpture of Čovek sa mrtvim detom (Man with a dead child), sculpted in 1961, became a permanent fixture of the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art.……

原文较长，这里只摘了前面一部分，摘自英文维基百科「Jovan Soldatović」（暂时没有中文条目，下面是英文原文），按 CC BY-SA 4.0 使用，去掉了参考文献、外部链接等尾部小节和表格，其余文字未作改动。