Dušan Petričić Exhibition Opening in the Krokodil Center and Inauguration of the 2-D Monument of Branko Ćopić – 10, 9, 8, 7…

07 Feb Dušan Petričić Exhibition Opening in the Krokodil Center and Inauguration of the 2-D Monument of Branko Ćopić – 10, 9, 8, 7…

Thursady, February 10, 7pm
KROKODIL Center, Karađorđeva 43 (entrance from Male stepenice 1a)

The KROKODIL Center will start the new exhibition season with an exhibition of caricatures by the famous illustrator Dušan Petričić with the title “10, 9, 8, 7…”. The exhibition will be opened on Thursday, February 10, at 7pm with the inauguration of the 2-D monument of Branko Ćopić.
Petričić’s monument of Branko Ćopić is a unique example of a two-dimensional, “illustrated” monumental art intervention in public space. The same piece, albeit produced from more expendable, softer material, was in 2015 installed in the immediate vicinity of the KROKODIL Center at the initiative of the cultural institution Parobrod and the Municipality of Stari Grad. After only a few days, the monument was vandalized and destroyed. The KROKODIL Association then decided to restore and install again the same artwork – this poignant look at the character and work of the favorite children’s writer of many generations.

The selection of caricatures that the audience will have the opportunity to see during the next two months in the KROKODIL Center is compiled in a book of Petričić’s caricatures under the title “10, 9, 8, 7“ “, which was recently published by the Laguna publishing house. Selected in the book are Petričić’s caricatures from the last five years, entirely dedicated to a detailed analysis of political and social reality, which the author presents with relentlessly honest satire: exactly as it is, marked by the complete abolition of democratic institutions and values, dictatorship, arbitrary rule of one man, media darkness, fascism, radical right-wing ideas and activities, incompetent people in important positions, criminalization, denial of responsibility for crimes committed in the past and promotion of convicted war criminals, etc. With his caricatures, Petričić reminds us that we live in a deeply sick time and that the disease, unfortunately, has not only affected our society, but has a pandemic character. Thus, reality once again turned into a caricature, and the substances that the author is looking for have over time become ever more toxic and stronger. Dušan Petričić will be signing books at the exhibition opening, and visitors will be able to buy signed prints of exhibited caricatures for the entire duration of the exhibition.

Branko Ćopić (January 1915 – 26 March 1984) was a Yugoslav writer. He wrote poetry, short stories and novels, and became famous for his stories for children and young adults, often set during World War II in revolutionary Yugoslavia, written with characteristic Ćopić’s humor in the form of ridicule, satire and irony.

As a professional writer, Ćopić was very popular and was able to sell large number of copies. This allowed him to live solely from his writings, which was rare for the novelists in Yugoslavia at the time. However, the quality of his writings brought him inclusion into primary school curriculum, which meant that some of his stories found their way in to the text-books and some novels became compulsory reading.

In the early 1950s, he also wrote satirical stories, criticizing social and political anomalies and personalities from the country’s political life of the time, for which he was considered a dissident and “heretic”, and had to explain himself to the party hierarchy.

Dušan Petričić (Belgrade, May 10, 1946) is a Serbian cartoonist, graphic artist, illustrator and professor. In the class of Professor Bogdan Kršić, he graduated from the Graphic Department of the Academy of Applied Arts in Belgrade in 1969. He worked as a cartoonist from 1969 to 1993 in Belgrade’s daily newspaper “Večernje novosti”. He has illustrated numerous children’s books and his caricatures have appeared in various newspapers and magazines from Politika to The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Toronto Star. Petričić has received numerous awards for his work including an IBBY Certificate of Honour, an Alberta Book Award for his illustrations in Tim Wynne-Jones’ On Tumbledown Hill and many others. In 1989 he won the Levstik Award in Slovenia for his illustrations of Guliver med pritlikavci (Gulliver in Lilliput).In 2001 the book The Longitude Prize for which he produced the illustrations won an honour at the Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Awards. From 1993 to 2013, he lived and worked in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Nowadays he regularly publishes in the NIN magazine and at the nova.rs portal.