Gentle lord of stone

A kind of embodiment of Wilde's attitude that "beauty is the only thing against which not even time can do anything", and that "philosophies scatter like sand, one faith passes after another, but beauty is a joy for all time and a property of eternity", is the work of the ingenious sculptor Miodrag Šćepanović. With the rapture of a medieval saint, he searches for beauty as the true secret of life.

After graduating from the Faculty of Fine Arts, sculpture department, in the class of professor Miša Popović in 1983 in Belgrade, he returned to Kolašin, a place of "sacred and cherished memories". Following his star, and adhering to the principle that "it's not what they offer you that's attractive, but what you refuse", he doesn't use the opportunity to stay in the metropolis. He is attracted by Anthean power to the campagna felice (happy countryside), a place of famous and great secrets, a place of holy love for beauty and nature.

In the flame of passion, imbued with some premonition or apparition, he walks along the banks of the river Svinjača, at the foot of Kolašin, to hear the "quiet speech of the voice of nature", perhaps the song of the sirens, or to discover the tears of Niobe among the multicolored volcanic pebbles. Like Michelangelo, he thinks that the sculpture already lives in the stone, imbued with the mysticism of time and divine magic, only the artist has to "take it out". At the beginning of his creative adventure, he works in wood, and then stone becomes the author's primary medium. He dedicated himself to a stone that reminds him of the fact that Montenegro is a fresco in stone, that "the stone is older than anything else", and that with the image and word drawn into it, we leave "a sign that we spent the night under the porch of the riddle".

Through some spiritual ecstasy and fanaticism of his inner truth, he finds stone pebbles, whose size, shape and color invoke his emotions and ideas, and with which, through lyrical and sensitive treatment, he breathes new life. His stone symphony, which combines human and divine, time and eternity, mystical love and nobility of spirit, traditional and contemporary, is filled with chamber-sized sculptures of special finesse, majestic polish and Hellenic elegance. With artisanal superiority in stone processing, this "gentle master of materials", while demonstrating artistic freedom and respect for conventions, builds an opus entirely dedicated to the classical ideal of beauty. Female portraits, figures, torsos and animals of all kinds form the essence of the thematic-motive grayscale of this work, of particular ethereality and harmony. However, the stone embroidery of a female figure dominates the mantle of his art.

His sensually shaped graces have the stamp of sacredness, pharaonic peace and noble seriousness, loveliness and grace. There are no traces of sin or age on their faces, their beauty is presented as a reflection of divine beauty. This emanation of sublime restraint seems to embody that Renaissance ideal - virtutem forma decorat (beauty adorns virtue). In this contemplation of beauty, its idealization, there are poetic rhymes and hymns written in stone, which celebrate the sublime, spiritual and eternal. As Petrarca in the character of Laura, in the scattered Romes she materializes the ancient concept of kalokagatia, a combination of external and internal beauty, virtue and light.

Sculptor of exceptional sensibility and imagination, Šćepanović creates work free from illustrativeness and naturalistic factography. He is a master of lyrical form, sensitive melodious movement and stillness, elegantly evoked in a unique harmony. He achieves subtle observations and psychological studies of his intimate sculptures, female figurines, not with a magical arabesque of faces, but with movements, color and allure of light and shadow. Faces like those of sphinxes, mysteriously absent, hide the drama of internal rhythms, a combination of suffering and love, longing for purity and harmony, the unequaled struggle of "the human soul against the shackles of the body". The variety of poses and attitudes of the female body, in general wearing the spirit of mystery and imagination, creates the illusion of something magnificent and dreamy, noble and chaste, as well as a split between anger and suffering, some "wave and fire, gathered heat and strength".

The expressive poetic refinement of Šćepanović's reduced expression is the fruit of emotional richness, not the result of rational pragmatism. It is like Stijović's "imaginative invention", that Ariadne's thread that leads us through the corridors of this stone palace of the spirit. Only a devotee of the sacrament of matter and form, nature and art, and an expert connoisseur of the morphological characteristics of stone, its veins and color palette, can develop his epigrammatically sublimated plastic thought in a refined way. A patina of lofty monumentality and tranquility, a lyrical mood and brilliantly polished surfaces that reflect light, sensually stylized lines and a refined sense of Valerian values, adorn his figures, "Paleolithic Venuses". The compactness of the volume and the morphology of "neoclassical but also neo-renaissance provenance" are the foundations of this meticulous and inventive expressiveness. The potentiated attributes and the registered intensity of ideas and emotions also refer to the cycle of animal figures, especially cats and doves, extraordinary relaxation and vitality.

In various analyzes of his poetics, we find subdued reminiscences of expressive-exotic Sumerian-Akkadian sculpture, of Etruscan simplicity and Egyptian calmness, and of Renaissance idealization. Also, a certain correspondence with the poetic canons of Risto Stijović and Luka Tomanović, the demiurge of Montenegrin modern sculpture. Establishing questionable communication with different spiritual and artistic traditions, Šćepanović did not fall into eclecticism, but created a unique style - an artistic synthesis of "traditional expression and contemporary identity".

The paradox is that for many years his work was covered by a cloak of silence. The despotism of trans-avant-garde and post-modern ideologies and new media did not kill him. In creative seclusion, following his artistic-philosophical doctrine and spiritual existence, aware that "only what is clear is not in memory but in eternity", he devotedly and primordially tried to subordinate the narcissism of the visible world - the stone of his climate - to his own creative vision. This is what makes the unadulterated value of the sculptural skill existent.

And then, like a silver shell in dark waters, flashed his work in the capital city of spiritual history - sacred history, the magic point of acquisition of so many directions of world history. In fact, at the Autumn Salon in Paris in 2006, he was awarded the first prize for the sculpture "Paul Belmondo". The reputation of the original sculptor, whose work transcends time limitations, was confirmed by the "Michel Dimon" award at the Salon of French Artists "Grand Pale" - Paris 2012, and the bronze medal at the same salon in 2014.

His work is a confirmation of the thesis that "only sacred things deserve to be touched by man", and that "matter must be processed by the spirit in order to grow into eternal art".