Medium: Oil on canvas. Measures 25 3/4 x 35 1/2 inches / (65.4 x 90.17 cm). Date of creation: c. Condition: Very good condition. Provenance: Galleria del Deposito , Genoa, Italy (stamped on verso). The following biography from the Outsider Art Fair website via Galerie St. Etienne : Iija Basicevic (who later adopted the surname Bosilj as an artistic pseudonym) was born in 1895 in the town of Sid, in what is now Serbia and Montenegro. His family were peasants who earned their living farming and raising pigs. While Ilija had little formal schooling, he was highly respected within the local community. In the 1950s, a naive art renaissance swept through Yugoslavia, although the official style, as in the Soviet Union, was Socialist Realism. Ilijas art-critic son, Dimitrije Basicevic, was an early partisan of the most famous Hlebene artist, Ivan Generalic. And it was thus that the unemployed and persecuted father, now 62 years old, got the idea of painting. At first, Dimitrije did not approve of his fathers work. However, the longer he looked at his fathers art, the more he became convinced of its quality. Ilija drew on extremely personal aesthetic resources, and his work is extraordinary precisely because it lacks the somewhat canned quality typical of many Hlebene-school pictures. In1971, Sid established the Museum of Naive Art, yet is soon floundered due to lack of financial success. The civil war that led to the dismemberment of Yugoslavia following the fall of Communism has further served to limit Ilija’s international exposure in recent years. It may, however, be said that, like the naives, Ilija had a conscious sense of himself as a painter, and the fact that he worked principally in oil on canvas attests to his artistic ambitions. On the other hand, his subject matter is not derived from observable reality, but rather, in the manner of art brut, from the artists own idiosyncratic visions and dreams. Although much of Ilijas work has Biblical overtones, Ilija considered faith a private matter and, like most Serbs, went to church only on special occasions. The artist was also influenced in his choice of subject matter by the largely oral traditions of Serbian folk poetry, myth and history. Stylistically, one can detect the influence of Byzantine icons and regional folk art. The item “Ilija Basicevic Bosilj Serbian Outsider Folk Artist Original Signed Oil Painting” is in sale since Friday, July 21, 2017. This item is in the category “Art\Paintings”. The seller is “newantiquarian-fineart” and is located in Encino, California. This item can be shipped to United States.
- Original/Reproduction: Original
- Medium: Oil
- Listed By: Dealer or Reseller
- Style: Outsider Art
- Signed?: Signed
- Artist: Ilija Basicevic Bosilj
- Region of Origin: Europe
- Date of Creation: Modern (1900-1979)
- Originality: Original
- Features: Framed
- Size Type/Largest Dimension: 25 3/4 x 35 1/2 inches
