Stojan Aralica

Stojan Aralica was born on July 24, 1883 in the Škare settlement near Otočac. He was a Serbian painter and graphic artist born in today’s Croatia, who was a member of ULUS, SANU and JAZ.

His opus consists of over 1500 works of art. It can be chronologically divided into the Munich, Paris, Zagreb and Belgrade phases, with clearly defined stylistic features. In the first phase, the influences of academicism and secession are visible. He starts with portraits and sacred motifs, then continues to do portraits and nudes. In Paris, he fundamentally changes his artistic approach, and his most common motifs are landscape and still life. During the time he lived in Zagreb, he painted primarily intimate pieces of landscapes from the Adriatic. It is the most successful period of his creativity, with images full of warmth, light and intense pure color.

In addition to Milo Milunović, Marko Čelebonović and Milivoj Uzelac, he participated in the extremely notable exhibition at the Bernheim Women gallery in Paris (1931). He visited almost all of Europe and some North African countries for his studies.
Stojan Aralica had his first independent exhibition in Zagreb in 1920 and later organized many exhibitions throughout Yugoslavia. He was a member of the artistic groups Oblik (1934), Twelve (1937), and Six (1954).

He is one of the leading Serbian and Yugoslav artists of the 20th century and is the winner of numerous awards, including: the October Award of the City of Belgrade (1959), the Seventh of July Award of Serbia (1963), the prestigious Yugoslav Award of the AVNOJ (1973), the Order of Merit with a Golden Wreath (1978), etc.

Aralica’s works are preserved and exhibited in the National Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, the Matica Srpska Gallery and the Pavel Beljanski Memorial Collection in Novi Sad, as well as in many museum-gallery institutions and private collections.
He lived in Zagreb until the outbreak of the Second World War, and then escaped to Serbia in 1941 and settled in Belgrade, where he remained until the end of his life.
Stojan Aralica died on February 4, 1980 and was buried in the Alley of Deserving Citizens at the New Cemetery in Belgrade.