One hundred years - it's a saying, a greeting, a wish, in almost all languages. Century. In those hundred years, Vojo Stanić created a magical world, I dare say, a far more beautiful and interesting world than the one we spend and live in. The world of Voj Stanić is dislocated, it is a different perspective, through characters, colors and an angle that is only his, Vojov.
In an apartment below Gorica, in a street that I still call "Moše Pijade" out of habit, I looked at Voj Stanić's paintings on the wall. There were more famous names and painters on that wall, but Voj's painting always played, it was alive and exciting. His characters seem to have lived real lives during the night or while you are not looking at them, as if in a parallel universe, when you appear, the characters return to the positions given to them by Vojo Stanić.
Voj's studio is an art in itself. Unpretentious, Mediterranean, resembling the perfect nonchalance of Alberto Giacometti in Paris. The small window overlooking the promenade, Vojo's binoculars, spyglass, magnifying glass, that window is the filter through which Vojo observed the world, the exterior that he painted. Voj's window is a projector, it illuminates through it. His window is also a beacon of art!
Through that mystical window, we all saw the change of people, generations, tourists, seasons, boats in storms, boats on dry land. We have seen seemingly irrelevant characters who become the main characters of the picture, we have seen originals, madmen, professors, cyclists, sailors and just Vojov Mediteran!
He sees further, feels more, for him that one little window is enough to create his biggest world. Vojo created a twisted world before "twistiness" became fashionable in art. His disobedience is non-compliance with norms, rules, deviation from those who forcefully break the rules, who make a fuss and promote themselves. Vojo is always calm, on his way, there was never in him and his works an insistence on darkness, depictions of rulers, pism, karst because of karst, flags, battles, aggression and megalomania.
He is himself, with a scarf or a sailor's shirt, a pipe or a cigarette, with a funny attitude that comes to him like a bulletproof vest from everything and from the people. Vojo constantly tells us that those we consider crazy are the only ones right, that we should not judge too soon, that humor wins, that the world is absurd, that everything is a catch and a catch, that the secret and answer is in the sea. We remember his strange characters, because everything else is easily forgotten. Voj's pictures are a miracle!
In a few sentences, Vojo Stanić described the Nobel laureate Ivo Andrić better than all his biographers who wrote great books about Andrić. The Nobel laureate was offered many paintings and painters, and he hung a picture of Voj Stanić and a drawing of the great Dragan Lubarda, a dreamer and master of the line, also a great joker, on the wall.
Vojo has an eye, he is a master at seeing the world, exposing it and presenting it to us as a puzzle. It is up to us to interpret, to admire, to look for our angle on the pictures and the world of Vojov, to experience it all, all the magic of the Mediterranean.
Three digits, one and two zeros, one hundred years have passed since the painter Vojo Stanić was born in Podgorica. His window is in Herceg Novi, through it even when there is no one outside he still sees everything. It is a great privilege to have such an artist, to witness such a gift and idea. A hundred years!
Long live Vojo!
Bonus video:
