Zdravko Zupan

Bozidar Veselinovic
(1921-1999)

Article from the catalogue of the exhibition "Bozidar Veselinovic (1921-1999)", Mala galerija ULUPUDS, Belgrade, Serbia, May 24 – June 12, 2001

Translation into English by Milica Stojanovic-Blazina

Bozidar Veselinovic, one of the most prominent illustrators of the realistic school in the second half of the 20th century, was born on April 17th, 1921, in Petrovac-on-Mlava, Serbia, but he worked and lived his whole life in Belgrade, where he first finished the School of Civil Engineering and then entered the University of Architecture. He died in Belgrade, January 15,1999.

He published his first illustrations in the early 50's. At that time he also became a regular contributor to children magazine »Politikin zabavnik« (Belgrade) and in the following four decades he was to do many illustrations for this magazine, as well as occasionally contributing to magazine »Duga« and daily »Borba«.

Bozidar Veselinovic is a brilliant draughtsman with an idiosyncratic and recognizable style. He neither followed anyone else's style in particular, nor did he have any followers. Although he tried his hand at various drawing techniques, he seems to have been best at black-and-white illustration in ink, for which he used either a pen or a brush.

Veselinovic did not only magazine but also book illustrations. As early as 1960 he illustrated the fairy tale King of the Golden River by British writer John Ruskin, published by »Sportska knjiga«. However, most of his book illustrations were done in 70's and 80's for the Belgrade publishing house »Prosveta«, for which he created covers (thus also creating the graphic identity) and illustrations for dozens of »Plava ptica« edition books. During this period he also did several books from »Kadok« and »Zlatna grlica« editions.

Along with some other illustrators who were realistic in expression (A. Hecl, Z. Sulic, J. Milanovic, B. Jovanovic, I. Koljanin, R. Ruvarac), Veselinovic played a significant role in establishing domestic comic strip, leaving behind him over twenty interesting and original comic strip stories.

The scripts he mostly did himself, finding inspiration in the remote past or in a distant future. He achieved his greatest success with the historical comic strip Dabisa.