Damjan Đakov
DAMJAN ĐAKOV (Belgrade, 1959) graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts under the tutelage of Professor Momčilo Antonović. He built his artistic reputation primarily in Italy, where he lived for over twenty years and where he plays a significant role on the art scene.
Drawing on the experience of trans-avant-garde, bad painting, critical figuration and Magritte’s metaphysics, he created an authentic, sophisticated expression that combines the aesthetics of pop art and color neoexpressionism, creating a non-existentialist figure of simple symbolism and reduced narration.
“Every interpretation is subjective. Once I painted a painting with a male figure washing his face. I wanted to show a moment of cleanliness, when you splash your face with water. Then a friend of mine looked at the painting and said: “Ohhh! This poor man in your picture is bawling his eyes out.” If I paint just a figure on a canvas, the first association is isolation. Isolation is perceived as something negative, but for me isolation is a prerequisite for the act of creation and meditation.