Dado (painter)
Encyclopedia
Dado was a Yugoslavian-born artist who spent most of his life and creative career in France. He is particularly known as a painter but was also active as an engraver, drawer, book illustrator and sculptor.
, the historic capital of Montenegro, then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
and grew up in a middle-class family. His mother, Vjera Djuric (née Kujacic) was a teacher in biology and his father Ranko Djuric belonged to a family of entrepreneurs.
His childhood years were affected by world events and by personal tragedies. During World War II, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia exdured Italian and German occupation, while the local partisans initiated a resistance that led to the emergence of Josip Broz Tito
's Yugoslavia.
At the age of 11, Djuric lost his mother in a country still coping with the wounds of war. He then temporarily moved to Slovenia
to be put up by a maternal uncle.
Though not interested in general education, Djuric developed a strong interest in art and displayed early creative skills. His family supported him to develop his talent and he started studying fine arts in the town of Herceg Novi
, Montenegro (1947–1951).
From 1951, Djuric moved to Serbia
to carry on his education in the fine arts school of Belgrade
.
workshop run by Gérard Patrice. In the meantime and through his professional environment, he learned French fast enough to be able to meet and interact with well-established artists such as Kalinowski and Jean Dubuffet
. These meetings and his showing some of his drawings and paintings raised the curiosity of artists and art dealers alike.
Art dealer and former resistant Daniel Cordier discovered the young Djuric and offered him the unique opportunity to show his work in his art gallery in 1958: Dado's professional career was launched.
Dado quickly moved from Paris to the countryside of Vexin
. In 1960, he settled in a former water mill in Hérouval, Oise
. This place was a haven of creation and social life until his death.
During these first years in France, he developed a particularly strong friendship with Bernard Réquichot, a French artist whose death in 1961 would deeply affect him.
Though his creative world is highly recognizable, his style and painting technique evolved along the years. While painting, he conducted a permanent search for the essence of energy, progressively abandoning details and fine techniques in favour of less colourful but more dynamic compositions.
An illustration of this evolution can be seen in large paintings such as Les Limbes, La Grande Ferme, Le Diptyque d'Hérouval (1974) and L'École de Prescillia (2001–2002).
From the 1990s, Dado also involved himself in several ambitious fresco projects. The two most noticeable achievements are a set of frescoes in a former vine industry building in Domaine des Orpellières, Hérault
and a Last Judgment frescoe in the former chapel of a leper colony in the town of Gisors
, Eure
.
Drawings and collages have been present in Dado's creative means of expression since his beginnings. The artist initially used pencils and India ink. He also resorted to mixed techniques using gouache, pencils and India ink.
He continued a substantial work in this domain, including several years in the 1980s in the Lacourière-Frélaut Engraving workshop in Paris and in an engraving workshop close to Hérouval (collaboration with engraver Gabriel Genty).
In 1962, Dado's first achievement in sculpture was a pole using cattle bones collected in a knacker's yard.
In 1968, Dado exhibited a Citroën Traction Avant
car in the CNAC, Paris. The car wreck appearance was totally changed by a profusion of bones.
Dado returned mainly to sculpture in his last decade of creation. In 2009 and under the auspices of Montenegro, a set of 27 sculptures Les Elégies Zorzi was exhibited in the Zorzi palace during the Venice Art Biennale.
From the mid 1990s to 2000, the artist also explored the use of ceramics as a medium for his creation. A most noticeable achievement in this field is a set of ceramics tiles in tribute to French writer Irène Némirovsky
.
Having met French writer Georges Perec
, Dado illustrated Alphabets, a book dedicated to word play (1976). After Georges Perec's death, Dado would work on a second version of the book, mainly consisting in enriched illustrations of the first version.
Two important collaborators of Dado were Claude Louis-Combet and Pierre Bettencourt.
Pierre Bettencourt and Dado produced illustrated versions of Les plus belles Phrases de la Langue française, Voyage sur la Planète innommée and Les Négriers jaunes (1995).
Claude Louis-Combet, a long-time friend, and Dado produced several books. Some of those texts were specifically written in order to be published with illustrations of Dado. Including those is Les Oiseaux d'Irène (2007), a personal tribute of both artists to French writer Irène Némirovsky.
In the 2000s, Dado also worked with Jean-Marc Rouillan with the publishing of Les Viscères polychromes de la Peste brune, 2009.
Though staying most of the time in his secluded home, Dado occasionally left his place to feed his interest in the outer world. In 1984, he was made a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
.
Besides travelling several times to New York, he had a unique experience joining a team of medical researchers in Central Africa in 1974, spending a month with the Pygmies of the Central African Republic
rainforest. Other noticeable experiences were a discovery of India in 1992 and a trip to Guatemala in 1997.
Influence of these trips is reflected in paintings such as the Boukoko triptyque (1974) and Tikal (1998).
Dado died at the age of 77 in Pontoise
near Paris on November 27, 2010.
Early life and education (1933–1955)
Djuric was born on October 4, 1933, in CetinjeCetinje
Cetinje , Цетиње / Cetinje , Italian: Cettigne, Greek: Κετίγνη, Ketígni) is a town and Old Royal Capital of Montenegro. It is also a historical and the secondary capital of Montenegro , with the official residence of the President of Montenegro...
, the historic capital of Montenegro, then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941...
and grew up in a middle-class family. His mother, Vjera Djuric (née Kujacic) was a teacher in biology and his father Ranko Djuric belonged to a family of entrepreneurs.
His childhood years were affected by world events and by personal tragedies. During World War II, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia exdured Italian and German occupation, while the local partisans initiated a resistance that led to the emergence of Josip Broz Tito
Josip Broz Tito
Marshal Josip Broz Tito – 4 May 1980) was a Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman. While his presidency has been criticized as authoritarian, Tito was a popular public figure both in Yugoslavia and abroad, viewed as a unifying symbol for the nations of the Yugoslav federation...
's Yugoslavia.
At the age of 11, Djuric lost his mother in a country still coping with the wounds of war. He then temporarily moved to Slovenia
Slovenia
Slovenia , officially the Republic of Slovenia , is a country in Central and Southeastern Europe touching the Alps and bordering the Mediterranean. Slovenia borders Italy to the west, Croatia to the south and east, Hungary to the northeast, and Austria to the north, and also has a small portion of...
to be put up by a maternal uncle.
Though not interested in general education, Djuric developed a strong interest in art and displayed early creative skills. His family supported him to develop his talent and he started studying fine arts in the town of Herceg Novi
Herceg Novi
Herceg Novi is a coastal town in Montenegro located at the entrance to the Bay of Kotor and at the foot of Mount Orjen. It is the administrative center of the Herceg Novi Municipality with around 33,000 inhabitants...
, Montenegro (1947–1951).
From 1951, Djuric moved to Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
to carry on his education in the fine arts school of Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
.
Arrival in France and first exhibitions in Paris (1956–1961)
Encouraged by one of his teachers in Belgrade, Djuric moved to Paris, France, in 1956 in the hope to work there as an artist. He survived thanks to small jobs and eventually was hired in a lithographyLithography
Lithography is a method for printing using a stone or a metal plate with a completely smooth surface...
workshop run by Gérard Patrice. In the meantime and through his professional environment, he learned French fast enough to be able to meet and interact with well-established artists such as Kalinowski and Jean Dubuffet
Jean Dubuffet
Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making.-Life and work:Dubuffet was...
. These meetings and his showing some of his drawings and paintings raised the curiosity of artists and art dealers alike.
Art dealer and former resistant Daniel Cordier discovered the young Djuric and offered him the unique opportunity to show his work in his art gallery in 1958: Dado's professional career was launched.
Dado quickly moved from Paris to the countryside of Vexin
Vexin
The Vexin is a historical county of northwestern France. It covers a verdant plateau on the right bank of the Seine comprising an area east-to-west between Pontoise and Romilly-sur-Andelle , and north-to-south between Auneuil and the Seine near Vernon...
. In 1960, he settled in a former water mill in Hérouval, Oise
Oise
Oise is a department in the north of France. It is named after the river Oise.-History:Oise is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790...
. This place was a haven of creation and social life until his death.
During these first years in France, he developed a particularly strong friendship with Bernard Réquichot, a French artist whose death in 1961 would deeply affect him.
Painting and drawing
Dado's painting and drawing activities extended across more than five decades. His paintings are mainly oil painting on linen but he also used acrylic paint and wood or even metal plates as supports.Though his creative world is highly recognizable, his style and painting technique evolved along the years. While painting, he conducted a permanent search for the essence of energy, progressively abandoning details and fine techniques in favour of less colourful but more dynamic compositions.
An illustration of this evolution can be seen in large paintings such as Les Limbes, La Grande Ferme, Le Diptyque d'Hérouval (1974) and L'École de Prescillia (2001–2002).
From the 1990s, Dado also involved himself in several ambitious fresco projects. The two most noticeable achievements are a set of frescoes in a former vine industry building in Domaine des Orpellières, Hérault
Hérault
Hérault is a department in the south of France named after the Hérault river.-History:Hérault is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790...
and a Last Judgment frescoe in the former chapel of a leper colony in the town of Gisors
Gisors
Gisors is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located northwest from the center of Paris.Gisors, together with the neighbouring communes of Trie-Château and Trie-la-Ville, form an urban area of 12,669 inhabitants...
, Eure
Eure
Eure is a department in the north of France named after the river Eure.- History :Eure is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790...
.
Drawings and collages have been present in Dado's creative means of expression since his beginnings. The artist initially used pencils and India ink. He also resorted to mixed techniques using gouache, pencils and India ink.
Engravings
Dado started exploring the techniques of engraving (copper-plate engraving and etching) with the help of Alain Controu in Normandy in 1967. Their collaboration continued until the 1990s.He continued a substantial work in this domain, including several years in the 1980s in the Lacourière-Frélaut Engraving workshop in Paris and in an engraving workshop close to Hérouval (collaboration with engraver Gabriel Genty).
Sculpture and ceramics
Sculpture played a particular role in Dado's creation, as premises can be seen as early as in 1962 but most works were made in the 2000s until his death.In 1962, Dado's first achievement in sculpture was a pole using cattle bones collected in a knacker's yard.
In 1968, Dado exhibited a Citroën Traction Avant
Citroën Traction Avant
The Citroën Traction Avant is an automobile which was produced by the French manufacturer Citroën from 1934 to 1957. About 760,000 units were produced.-Impact on the world:...
car in the CNAC, Paris. The car wreck appearance was totally changed by a profusion of bones.
Dado returned mainly to sculpture in his last decade of creation. In 2009 and under the auspices of Montenegro, a set of 27 sculptures Les Elégies Zorzi was exhibited in the Zorzi palace during the Venice Art Biennale.
From the mid 1990s to 2000, the artist also explored the use of ceramics as a medium for his creation. A most noticeable achievement in this field is a set of ceramics tiles in tribute to French writer Irène Némirovsky
Irène Némirovsky
Irène Némirovsky was a French novelist who died at the age of 39 in Auschwitz, Nazi Germany occupied Poland. She was killed by the Nazis for being classified as a Jew under the racial laws, which did not take into account her conversion to Roman Catholicism.-Biography:Irène Némirovsky was born in...
.
Collection books
A fervent books collector and reader, Dado found opportunities to work with writers, poets or essayists, who most of time were friends of him.Having met French writer Georges Perec
Georges Perec
Georges Perec was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist and essayist. He is a member of the Oulipo group...
, Dado illustrated Alphabets, a book dedicated to word play (1976). After Georges Perec's death, Dado would work on a second version of the book, mainly consisting in enriched illustrations of the first version.
Two important collaborators of Dado were Claude Louis-Combet and Pierre Bettencourt.
Pierre Bettencourt and Dado produced illustrated versions of Les plus belles Phrases de la Langue française, Voyage sur la Planète innommée and Les Négriers jaunes (1995).
Claude Louis-Combet, a long-time friend, and Dado produced several books. Some of those texts were specifically written in order to be published with illustrations of Dado. Including those is Les Oiseaux d'Irène (2007), a personal tribute of both artists to French writer Irène Némirovsky.
In the 2000s, Dado also worked with Jean-Marc Rouillan with the publishing of Les Viscères polychromes de la Peste brune, 2009.
Production design
- In 1993, Dado took part to the production design of HandelGeorge Frideric HandelGeorge Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
's TamerlanoTamerlanoTamerlano is an opera in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music , with music by George Frideric Handel to an Italian text by Nicola Francesco Haym, adapted from Agostin Piovene's Tamerlano together with another libretto entitled Bajazet after Nicolas Pradon's Tamerlan, ou La Mort de...
for the Badisches Staatstheater KarlsruheBadisches Staatstheater KarlsruheThe Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe is a theatre and opera house in Karlsruhe, Germany. It has existed in its present form and place at Ettlinger Tor since 1975...
, direction Jean-Louis Martinoty, conductor Roy GoodmanRoy GoodmanRoy Goodman is a conductor and violinist, specialising in the performance and direction of early music...
. - In 1996, Dado renewed his experience in production design with the world premiere of Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez of Stavros Xarchakos, based on a poem by LorcaFederico García LorcaFederico del Sagrado Corazón de Jesús García Lorca was a Spanish poet, dramatist and theatre director. García Lorca achieved international recognition as an emblematic member of the Generation of '27. He is believed to be one of thousands who were summarily shot by anti-communist death squads...
in the Théatre Impérial de CompiègneCompiègneCompiègne is a city in northern France. It is designated municipally as a commune within the département of Oise.The city is located along the Oise River...
, France.
Main exhibitions,
- 1958: Galerie Daniel Cordier, Paris
- 1960: Galerie Daniel Cordier, Frankfurt
- 1962: Galerie Daniel Cordier, New-York
- 1967: Galerie André François Petit, Paris
- 1970: Retrospective Exhibition, Centre National d'Art Contemporain, Paris
- 1971: Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Paris
- 1974: Aberbach Fine Arts Gallery, New-York
- 1980: Galerie Isy Brachot, Paris
- 1982: Atelier Lacourière-Frélaut, FIAC, Grand Palais, Paris
- 1984: Galerie Beaubourg, Paris
- 1987: Galleria Forni, Bologna, Italy
- 1990: Galerie Beaubourg, "Dado-Handel" exhibition, Paris
- 2009: Palazzo Zorzi, Venice Art Biennale, Italy
- 2010: Shanghai World Exposition, Montenegro Pavilion, China
- 2011: Galerie Jeanne Bucher, Paris
Dado in public collections
- Musée Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
- Musée des Abattoirs, Toulouse, France
- Musée régional d'Art contemporain de la Région Languedoc-Roussillon
- MOMA, New York, United States
Personal life
Dado met his wife Hessie, an artist, during a trip to New York in 1962. Originally native of the Caribbean, she moved to Hérouval and married him. They raised five children together.Though staying most of the time in his secluded home, Dado occasionally left his place to feed his interest in the outer world. In 1984, he was made a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres
The Ordre des Arts et des Lettres is an Order of France, established on 2 May 1957 by the Minister of Culture, and confirmed as part of the Ordre national du Mérite by President Charles de Gaulle in 1963...
.
Besides travelling several times to New York, he had a unique experience joining a team of medical researchers in Central Africa in 1974, spending a month with the Pygmies of the Central African Republic
Central African Republic
The Central African Republic , is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It borders Chad in the north, Sudan in the north east, South Sudan in the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo in the south, and Cameroon in the west. The CAR covers a land area of about ,...
rainforest. Other noticeable experiences were a discovery of India in 1992 and a trip to Guatemala in 1997.
Influence of these trips is reflected in paintings such as the Boukoko triptyque (1974) and Tikal (1998).
Dado died at the age of 77 in Pontoise
Pontoise
Pontoise is a commune in the northwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the centre of Paris, in the "new town" of Cergy-Pontoise.-Administration:...
near Paris on November 27, 2010.