The Magnificent Landscapes of the Native Land

Landscape has long ceased to be the provocative and dominant pictorial motif it once was for the leading figures of Montenegrin modernism throughout the twentieth century, including Lubarda, Milunović, Božović, Filipović, and others. Yet it remains a source of inspiration for many, particularly the landscapes that had not previously been native-ground subjects for prominent painters. These are, above all, the vistas and life in nature in northern Montenegro. A generation of young, educated artists has come of age there and has embraced the challenges of these long-buried motifs, approaching landscape in a modern idiom and seeking within it referential connections with their own reflections, as well as confirmation of imaginative associations. Aldemar Ibrahimović is one such artist.

Ibrahimović, born in 1962, graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo in 1986, in the class of Professor Radoslav Tadić. Upon returning to his native Rožaje, he gradually abandoned the cityscapes and portraits he had painted in Sarajevo and elsewhere and, fascinated by the magnificence and distinctiveness of the landscape in which he had grown up, began to paint it in a style entirely his own. It comes alive within him, prompting philosophical reflection on the ways and meaning of life, on the primordial sources of visual expression, on the colours of the earth and sky, illuminated by light in various seasons—at dawn, at noon, and at dusk.

He frequently shows his work, both in solo and group exhibitions, revealing new creative shifts in intellectual, chromatic, and compositional analyses. Milan Marović noted early on that Ibrahimović’s “artistic temperament is built upon tranquility, analytical precision, and curiosity.” He retained these qualities even when he began to combine the tendencies of abstract landscape generalisation with the elaboration of form and the development of lyrical sensibility in his handling of colour and light. With increasing mastery, he began to recompose space by synthesising vast expanses, adapting the whole to a vision born of the imagination and stimulated by the romanticism of what he had seen. He increasingly moved away from the classical horizontal sequences of ochre and light-brown tones, opting instead for planes of vibrant colours, subtly and associatively united.

Nataša Nikčević regards him as an artist of “lyrical, meditative sensibility and remarkable painterly culture,” whose works “also reveal a special relationship with the land which is both source and final refuge—the land that bestows strength at birth and shelter in death.”

In his recent works, Aldemar constructs new compositional schemes, relying on exceptionally well-chosen and coordinated vibrant colours, and—with the confidence acquired through serious and sustained work—translates the realistic experience of what he has seen into a more modern artistic formulation, into a universalised landscape in which the local colours, forms and light over wide meadow and snow-covered expanses remain vital. At the centre of the canvas, an abundance of visual contrasts—bound together through plastic and skillful execution—most often pulse, symbolising activity and life.

His brushstroke is broad and stable, yet at times swift, fragmented, and trembling, thereby animating the canvases and making them striking. Ibrahimović meticulously ‘works out’ each new development in his visual language, which is particularly evident in such highly synthesised themes as “Graveyard Stones”, “Viewpoints”, “Summer Day”, and “Spring”.

By placing broad planes of bright colour, elaborated in terms of light and chromatic value, side by side, and by dynamically introducing clusters of lines in darker tones, he creates firm, original wholes that exude a subtle and cultivated lyrical tone and the artist’s unique feeling for expanses.

Mladen Lompar astutely observes that the specifically “conceptualised Montenegrin space—or space in general—is not merely Ibrahimović’s escape from impression, to which most painters in Montenegrin art pay tribute, from beginners and amateurs to artists of the oldest generations. Aldemar openly dismantles traditionalist schemes through rearrangement and combination, but only for the sake of pictorial necessity.”

Travelling through many countries and becoming acquainted firsthand with both modern and old art, Ibrahimović has not succumbed directly to any single influence—a great virtue in an era where “resembling” someone practically means more than being original. Aldemar remains anchored in his sources of inspiration, complementing them with the Mediterranean light that fascinates him and which he embraced during his travels, even though it does not directly reach his homeland. He constructs pictorial wholes that are striking, fresh, and distinctive, while preserving the concept’s pure visual quality. Through this exhibition, he reveals his new achievements to the viewer and emerges as an accomplished painter who holds a distinguished place in our contemporary art.

Olga Perović Podgorica, 3 April 2005