REFLECTION OF REALITY AND DREAMS
The painting of Zoran Graovac, a professor at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, is recognizable by his specific interpretation of pointillism and divisionism, where classical optical synthesis is transformed into a contemporary, rhythmic and material painting language.
The key features of his pointillistic approach include: stroke, optical vibrations and light, rhythm and texture, as well as the merging of the analytical and the expressive.
When it comes to stroke, Graovac, unlike the strict, small and uniform pointillism of Georges Syre, uses wider, more expressive dots and spots.
By applying pure pigments and tones next to each other, Graovac achieves a strong sense of flickering light and air. Instead of preparing the final shade on the palette, he builds the fabric of the landscape by applying pigment to pigment. Dense pasty layers of paint create a micro-relief on the canvas, so that the painting reacts to the real light in space. The point represents the main supporting element of form and space, and not only for the optical mixing of color.
The painting is “assembled” only in the eye of the observer when moving away from the canvas. His landscape composition is characterized by a dense tactile layer of paint (impasto) and the rhythmic repetition of strokes that structure the entire surface of the canvas. By combining the analytical and expressive through a scientific approach to color, through personal gesturality in his own unique way, he gives the paintings a dynamic and meditative character. This thematic framework relies on classical painterly motifs, but through pointillistic and divisionist processing he translates them into contemporary visual explorations of light, space, and materiality. In this way, he emphasizes the airiness and dissolution of solid forms through flickering spots, creating the impression of morning light, twilight or sun glare. Trees, grass, water and sky are not sharply demarcated, their boundaries merge through the aforementioned optical mixing of adjacent tones, which achieves a feeling of constant movement and vibration in space.
Zoran Graovac was born in Belgrade in 1965. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, received his master’s degree in the class of Jovan Sivački, and his doctorate in the class of Prof. Milutin Dragojević. He has been a member of ULUS since 1991. So far, he has organized 15 solo exhibitions and participated in over 200 collective exhibitions in the country and abroad. He is the winner of the painting award from the Rista and Beta Vukanović Fund, the purchase of a painting from the 31st October Salon, and the award of the first Biennial of Church Art. He has created a large number of monumental mosaics and murals. In addition to painting, he also works with drawing, sculpture, mosaics, and handmade paper.
He has been working at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade since 1994 as a professor of Drawing and Evening Acts, and since 2008 he has been teaching the course “Wall Painting – Mosaic”, and is a member of the FLU Council. He is currently the director of the Center for Graphics and Visual Research of the Academy. His works are in public and private collections in the country and abroad.
Zoran Graovac’s exhibition “Reflection of Reality and Dreams” will be open until September 15, 2026.