The Serenity of Content and Colour

In their artistic quest, painters would visit major art centres, museums, and exhibitions, curiously and sceptically studying the methods of prominent artists, after which they would often retreat to smaller places, whether by choice or necessity, seeking tranquility or a more modest life, and there create their artistic world in their own visual language. If that retreat led them back to a native land dear to their hearts, and a picturesque one at that, so much the better: beloved landscapes would find their way onto the canvas and, in their own particular way, shape the artist’s sensibilities and painterly hand. This is something one feels in the work of Aldemar Ibrahimović, a teacher based in Rožaje, who feels the “fresh” and “chaste” beauty of his native land with touching sensitivity.

Ibrahimović was born in 1962. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo in 1986, in the class of Professor Radoslav Tadić. He has held several solo exhibitions, and in Podgorica, he has so far shown work only within group exhibitions organised by the Association of Fine Artists of Montenegro (ULUCG). His current exhibition presents thirty works that reveal his artistic abilities, aspirations, and achievements, while also testifying to what Milan Marović aptly describes as “a painterly temperament composed of tranquility, analytical precision, and curiosity.”

The exhibited works can be divided into three distinct groups. The first comprises paintings created in the years following his graduation: “Rooftops”, “Rocky Landscapes”, and “Portrait of Mother”. These works bear the imprint of a sound academic training, while also revealing a concentrated and coherent artistic expression. By juxtaposing vertical and horizontal planes and employing serene, well-balanced warm tones, Ibrahimović achieves in “Rooftops” compositions that are both appealing and stable. “Portrait of Mother” likewise dates from this period—a work that is direct, simple, and striking. Similarly, in the painting “Kyiv Station”, which brings this period to a close and stands as a fine figural composition, he attains solidity and coherence precisely through that same simplicity.

The second group, which also follows chronologically, includes canvases featuring rural motifs: “The Shepherd”, “The Flock”, “Birch Trees”… As though surrendering to a direct, idyllic experience of nature, Ibrahimović here set aside the creative refinement and conceptual elaboration of what he observed, producing several realistic, sprawling, oversized, and inconsistent paintings that do not quite match the quality and ambition of his other works.

The third group consists of landscapes from his native land, in which he strives to synthesise what he sees—to resist the enchantment of vast expanses of untouched nature, to condense his visual expression, and to render the emotional intensity of the experience more striking. He executes these with a classical, visible brushstroke, often disregarding perspective in favour of the greater expressiveness of a bright, somewhat lyrical palette: “Winter Day”, “Homesteads”, “Noon”… These are Ibrahimović’s most recent works, and they could well become the painter’s longer-term commitment—for an expression conceived along these lines, supported by an undeniably solid artistic education, allows for further modernisation and refinement, for the building of a recognizable painterly hand, and for deeper conceptual elaboration. All the more so given that this painter, as M. Marović notes in the preface to a fine catalogue, is “still in the phase of thorough exploration, construction, and development—a phase in which diverse artistic problems still genuinely engage and trouble him.”

Aldemar Ibrahimović possesses the patience, persistence, and knowledge to contend with the adversities that currently accompany artistic creation and to continue creating and maturing towards new artistic achievements.

Olga Perović Monitor, 25 June 1999.