Thematic exhibitions of works of naїve and marginal art are always very precious regarding continuous attempts to convey a true image of the essence and remarkable achievements in this specific domain of contemporary art. Highlighting certain subject matters in inexhaustible thematic repertoire, such exhibitions are a good example that confirms that basic imminent characteristic of naїve and marginal art is not certain thematic domain but, above all, wealth and freedom of imagination and inventiveness in both thematic and artistic sense. Presenting the works of various artists inspired with the same motif, thematic exhibitions point to inventiveness and authenticity of each artist as a unique and an unrepeatable artistic individuality.

The power of creative imagination in the works done by native chroniclers and landscape painters who tend to portray scenes from real, everyday life, finds its full expression when inspired with spiritual world, beyond senses. Aspiration towards mystic themes that emerge from spiritual, conscious and unconscious mental heritage is the expression of human alienation, irritable understanding of universe, chaotic experience, deep traces and dilemmas, suppressed dreams, memories and hopes. Facing incomprehensible and powerful forces, humans have always instinctively tried to rationalize and shape them into an imaginary, mythical and divine world as a presupposition of own balance and perception of meaning. Trying to make these forces closer and more realizable, they most often endow them with own appearance and shape. In this region, mythological fantasy originated from old Slav mythology, even older, pagan and insufficiently known mental heritage that in certain forms continued to exist after the era of Christianity, thus forming synergetic relations with new religion. These traditional beliefs in mythological creatures have survived until now along with numerous forms of Christian emanations because they were not experienced as divine, but more like humans with supernatural powers.



In this unlimited world of fantasy, angels and fairies with their complex meanings and wealth of forms, as well as spiritual and imaginative powers especially challenged and inspired creative fancy and freedom of many naїve and marginal artists. They approach to this theme from different standpoints due to personal artistic preferences and expressiveness; angels and fairies are only means and inspiration in revelation of own universe. For some of them, these themes are just an episode, while others like Vojkan Morar, Milanka Dinić are nearly completely preoccupied with these matters.

Angels as one of the most distinct representations of the ideal and unrealistic beauty with most intensive allusions to parallel, supernatural and spiritual world, are the most typical and immanent motifs in religious art. Angels are attributed different properties. Above all, they are the heavenly emissaries, heralds and mediators of God’s messages: they announce His will and perform the given tasks. As the symbols of powers of the invisible world and enlightment, the angels connect God and people, helping the latter as their younger, imperfect relatives. Depending on their position in the heavenly hierarchy, separated in several groups, they are differently portrayed. Most famous are seraphs, cherubs, archangels and guardian angels. They are usually painted like humans with wings. Angels are bodiless, immortal, mysterious creatures in the spiritual world that is incomprehensive but close to imagination and aspiration to supernatural.

The scope of transformation of this motif can be traced in the works by naїve and marginal artists, from traditional representations to scenes with unexpected, individual experiences. In his painting Adam and Eve, Tivadar Košut, although considerably retaining typical presentation of an angel with fiery sword, sent by God to expel Adam and Eve from Eden and prevent them from approaching the tree of immortality, transposes his angel using specific stylization. The composition is reduced to minimum elements and the forms are simplified to ultimate expressiveness. Nearly monochromatic surfaces, occasionally animated by strokes and framed with simple contours, pictorially refined with delicate drawing, contribute to harmony that dominates the painting. The figure of angel elaborated in both persuasive and delicately accented movement, stands out as central, bringing unusual and fascinatingly perfect harmony and inner dynamism to the composition.

In his painting Sveta Trojica (Holy Trinity), Slobodan Živanović creates rather traditionally iconographic presentation of Holy Trinity as three angels at dinner table in the scene of Abraham’s Welcome. Although the artist assumes the typical visualization and idealization that allude to the presence of the divine, he places them into an unusual ambience in the course of artistic proceedings. Three angels float in the tree with one burning and one extinct candle in the trunk hole. In the unusual and mystic scene that suggests the attendance to some intimate act of religious experience, we might perceive the so-called traditional concept of religion, where Christian belief is combined with reminiscences of ancient faith in order to communicate with the supernatural world more closely and personally, which is often seen in naїve and marginal art.

More complex example of specific synergism can be found in the sculpture Dreams and Thought by Bogosav Živković. Stately column whose monumental wooden mass is intensified by artistically rustic and dense intertwining of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures, and realistic scenes that coexist with creatures from folk legends and tales are interwoven into a new context thanks to the artist’s imagination. Winged figure in human shape, dynamically intertwining with variety of creatures could be differently interpreted, but being positioned on the head of a man, it immediately suggests a guardian angel. According to an old tale, each person has own guardian angel, to attend him from his birth until his death, as a devoted teacher and counselor. Its existence is manifested as the mental fight with own self when doubting whether to do something evil or as angel’s voice of pleasure for something generous.

Motif of an angel, which is rarely found in sculpture, especially inspired Saša Petrović Berdujac to investigate dualism of those divine creatures through his large sculptures. In Archangel Mihajlo, we see the representation of angel as a God’s soldier and a fair judge with sword in his right hand and scales in the left. Frontal, static figure of archangel is shaped in a deep relief, animated with short cuts of a chisel, which form dynamic surfaces. The artist achieves stronger effect in his sculpture Angel with a Stone Heart, where, employing powerful stylization of the masses and more distinctive movement, he emphasizes the force and quality of volume. A small piece of stone, implemented in massive, rustic form of wood intensifies symbolic energy of the sculpture. We find quite different experience of angel in the sculpture Angel of God’s Mercy. The figure with pronounced female characteristics, sweet face, open mouth, symbolizing merciful God’s herald is shaped in round volumes and more tranquil and refined surfaces. There is no narration; everything is reduced to symbolism and expression of monolithic shape that releases energy from wooden figure of the angel.

We experience specific paintings by Vojkan Morar, the author who is nearly completely devoted to the motif of angel, as a miraculous window open for mystic, supernatural and spiritual dimension. In his paintings Golden Heaven, Angels above Us, Sisterhood and They Walked to the Sky, the lower portions, full of fantastic architecture of fictitious towns or monasteries, stylized figures in human shapes with raised arms pointed to heavens personify the spirits in their persistent aspirations towards higher spheres. When he portrays them with roots that hold them tight to the ground, the artist adds branched crowns that extend towards the sky. Multitude of miniature presentations of these figures with raised arms are moving with violent gravitation towards the upper portions of the painting where angels with stretched wings and raised arms dominate as central activator of the composition. In these paintings, the motifs of angels are presented in one of their well-known form, as enormous heavenly army, protectors of cities, countries, churches and monasteries, but in Two and a Thousand Angels and Spring of Angels, they illustrate the fascination of the author who, in his miraculous works, designed them in most various forms. While in most canvases, angels are asexual creatures with reduced shapes, in Two and a Thousand Angels two dominant figures with accented male and female contours are in the front plan. Although by definition, angels are asexual, they may appear as male or female energy.

In authentic oeuvre of Sava Sekulić, in powerful, complex and condensed pictorial expression, most often and complex is the character of a woman, firstly as mother, the creator of everything, the symbol of safety, unconditioned and everlasting love, warmth and gentleness. Expectedly, the images of angels are characterized with the same energy. With his unlimited imagination, powerful experience and condensed expressive composition of synthesized and permeated forms, in Mother and Mother’s Wings and Flower of Motherhood the artist conjures up the sacredness of motherhood as an angelic act. The angel is a personification of a mother with wings shaped like either a stork or her children. In Angel-Girl, the composition is expressively stylized and reduced to the relation of two dominant surfaces, blue background and white figure of the angel. With its ultimately simplified and condense shape, a touching, slightly leaning figure of the angel, with arms clasped over the head and timeless, soundless but expressive glance, creates thrilling effect of angelic, motherly sorrow for inevitable earthly suffering of humankind.

The idea of angelic maternity is also found in Birth of Christ painted by Rosen Rašev, the artist whose oeuvre is most specifically characterized with religious contemplations, in either Biblical motifs or original encoding of his own concept of religiousness and relation towards God. The artist portrays Biblical scene of Christ’s birth in quite unusual and unexpected way, with pronounced artistic freedom, spontaneity and directness of artistic procedure. Nude figure of the Virgin with wings like an angel, the figure of Christ and a female angel holding the newly born are done in stylized, synthesized, reduced but stable and convincing drawing that revives flat, emblem-like treated surfaces that intensifies the inner drama of the scene. Ornamental reduction, imagination and expressiveness that allude to magic simplicity of a child’s drawing are even more pronounced in the painting It Ends Where It Begins. Directly and truly, Rosen Rašev transposes his experience into the emotion, relation towards existential issues of life and death, the good and the evil, birth, growth, reproduction and dying. He decomposes them into pure grammar of decorative elements and develops them into friezes of narrated plot, personifying the closed circle of life in which a couple of angels have the prominent place. In Rosen’s artistic work, angels are especially important. They are real and always present companions he freely communicates to, protective counselors that warn and soothe him. Such are monumental figures of angels in Angel of Destiny and Angel, almighty God’s messengers with unusual aerials, but also devoted and peaceful advisors and protectors of people. In Angel, God’s almighty emissary with eyes even on the legs is portrayed with symbols of a star and a foot by the head, which reveals its dual nature, divine and human. The artist emphasizes this gentleness of an angel, close to humans, in the figure of angel whose shape partly escapes from the canvas into the third dimension. Rosen’s angels are an unusual connection of the archaic and the modern, deeply and intensively linked to vital spiritual heritage of the Balkans, powerful and instinctive creative impulse and permanent aspiration towards artistic freedom.

Although in quite different form when compared to Rosen’s creations, in the painting Christ’s Birth by Dobrosav Milojević, a specific unity of Christian and pagan spiritual heritage is reshaped by authentic and creative imagination of the artist. The artist sets traditionally presented scene in an extremely imaginative and convincing composition that emphasizes the cave and the central motif of Birth. The woman on the left of Virgin Mary is holding a sheep’s head in her hand, which alludes to pagan customs. The aura of light and heavenly emanations is here introduced with unusual presentations of angel, depicted as birds with stretched wings and aureoles around the heads.

In the magic world of paintings by Ilija Bašičević Bosilj made of puzzling allegories and multi layered symbolism of fantastic scenes, even the angels are not in the form of traditional presentations of idealized God’s emissaries. Original and imaginary universe with most different forms of fantastic and hybrid creatures includes numerous presentations of apocalyptic angels and winged figures that allude to God’s heralds. In the paintings like Miss of Iliad, these creatures are presented within the context of Bosilj’s authentic mythology and are to be read in quite specific allegorical key. Authentic experience of the motif of an angel can be seen in Arrival of Astronauts in the Moon. The name of the painting itself intensifies the pronounced unconventionality and unlimited fancy by which the artist transforms the images of primeval angels, integrating them with he modern idea of cosmonauts. In the dynamic and diagonal composition, a whole series of winged creatures in unique golden mandorla resulted in nearly caricature display of bulky figures, powerfully stylized and synthesized in shape, opposing to the idealized presentations of angels. Emphatic inner expressiveness of the painting is the result of the artist’s genuine wish to satisfy his fantasy, employing absurd situations and intensive artistic and notional reduction.

The world of paintings done by Milanka Dinić is completely imbued with the artist’s unlimited imagination inspired with folk tales, myths, legends and intensive religious feeling in an unusual and synergetic framework that is conditioned by exclusively authentic experience and imagination. In this dense intertwining of unrealistic flora and fantastic architecture, a whole world of real and imagined creatures, princesses, fairies, goblins, angels and strange hybrid figures exists. In the painting Angels are Watching Us, in vibrant pointillism of intertwined scenes from Eden, figures of angels are depicted as floating, winged female figures that strongly resemble the fairy world. Angels that personify Holy Trinity in the painting Consecration of Holy Trinity Water acquire rather unusual form. Instead of idealized winged figures, the artist depicts fantastic, red creatures that allude to dragons in folk tales.

In the paintings by Milan Rašić, where placid idyllic native countryside prevails, fantastic angelic creatures are only an episode. We find idealized representations of angels with spread wings in Đorđić, the Performer on Gusle , where he personifies divine inspiration and in Holy Water, with standing figure of the angel as God’s emissary, directing the procession of people towards the holy source. Contrary to the idealized presentation of an angel as a divine creature, in Merciful Angel, the image of an angel is placed in quite different context. In the scene of bombardment of Belgrade, the plane that drops missiles is depicted as a winged angelic figure, ironically alluding to the name and hellish mercy of this military action (Merciful Angel).

Quite unusual display of angels can be found in pictorial world of Tomislav Blagojević, who combines and sublimes faraway world of prehistoric cave presentations of rudimentary figures of hunters and warriors, Biblical scenes and unrealistic non-terrestrial civilizations, employing ultimately reduced expression and strong stylization of shapes into symbols. In Blue Angel, a diagonal presentation of snake-like winged creature with horns is placed in the foreground. Two geometrically reduced figures with crosses on their heads in the background can represent triumphant figures of noble angels that ensure victory against evil forces, personified in the central figure of the fallen angel.

Although quite different in origin and context, the motif of fairies with its range and abundance, complex meaning and freedom of interpretation appeared to be inspiring for naїve and marginal artists. Fairies as mythological beings are undoubtedly most often found in numerous creations, but mostly in folk poems, tales and legends. The word ‘fairy’ is often included in toponyms, which confirms its cult. In our beliefs, fairies are assigned various properties and characteristics. These mystic, magic creatures live faraway from people, in mountain ridges, rivers, streams, springs or century-old forests, but they try to make contacts with humans. They are most often depicted as young and beautiful girls with long fair hair; dressed in white robes, unforgettable and disturbing, they appear individually or in groups, often in round circles. Fairies can take command of clouds, thunders and lightning; they can make lakes and seas rough, stop or freeze the wells, kill with glance, but cure any disease. Depending on their settlements, they may have various names: spring-fairies, lake-fairies, mountain-fairs, forest-fairies... In addition, the multitude of names is connected with various magic potentials.

In idyllic landscapes and everyday scenes done by Milan Rašić, motifs of angels and fairies are rarely found. In Wedding in Grgeteg, the artists introduces two fairy creatures in the upper portion above the hill in his recognizable, delicately coloured vertical composition, and the image of monastery and its surroundings with scene of wedding procession. Airy, floating winged figures that might be forest fairies provide mystic aura. This presentation of fairies in wedding scenes is not surprising, since this motif as a metaphor of female fantasy is often found in folk wedding lyrics. Even more interesting are presentations of fairies in the painting Village Radenković. There, the fairies are portrayed with wings and unusual white aureoles, floating above the water. These untypical aureoles probably illustrate ‘shelters’, the term that is often mentioned in folk lyrics, denoting the veil that covers their heads and wings and where their power is hidden. The scene with fairies above the water may allude to water-fairies and the belief that the spirits of dead girls reside in water or on the banks, always dancing in amusement.

In Miroslav Živkovilć‘s refined artistic world of unique and powerful poetic expression with reduced subject matters in delicate colourings and mystic atmosphere, we expectedly find the presentations of fairies. One of the best-known cults dedicated to fairies, which is in some way preserved until today, a spring-fairy, inspired the artist in A Fairy’s Wells and Echo by the Well. In an old tale, the one who drinks water or washes the face at an atypical well, should throw a coin or leave the gift for the fairy-keeper of the well. This old custom, although in different meaning, can still be recognized in throwing money to fountains. Živković depicts imaginary scene from phantasmagoric fairy world, guided by childishly imaginatve, true and authentic feeling of mythology. In Wild Girl, we recognize the echoes of legends about human encounters with fairy world. In tales, fairies attract young lads with their beauty and magic power, challenging them to compete in singing or archery. However, even when the lads captivate and gain them, the fairies often try to secretly take their wings and return to fairy world. The painting My Ancestor Fairy in the Universe is one of the most poetic representations of fairies; it speaks about touching and spontaneous experience of the artist and the importance of fairies to him. Effective refined thematic and stylistic reduction of pictorial elements in nearly monochromatic painting accentuates central figure of floating fairy in a delicate way, radiating with timeless and out space glow. The stylized countryside with circular tree-crowns, painted in lyrical gradation of blue nuances alludes to faraway and mystic heavenly wideness.

In tales, fairies appear alone, but they may be found in groups, most often in a circle. They are mostly good-natured creatures with supernatural virtues, but if someone sees them, or disturbs when they are dancing, they may be very dangerous and vindictive. Inspired with these stories, Dušan Jevtović created one of the most impressive and expressive experiences in naїve and marginal art in his painting Fairies in a Circle. Synthesis of ultimately reduced landscape at night, divided with spherical surfaces into portions animated with rare trees, accentuates unusually expressive physiognomies of clumsy figures of both nude fairies, dancing around the fire and men and women – inquisitive observers in disbelief, amazement and fear. The feeling of some undefined discomfort and threat that dominate over the canvas is intensified with a small, demonic figure, watching the scene hidden in the branches.

In the paintings by Milanka Dinić, the motif of a fairy is direct inspiration and catalyst. The artist has instinctively experienced this illusionary and mystic world of fantastic vegetation and creatures for decades as reality and a supporter of own existence. Her unlimited fancy finds everlasting source of inspiration in these mythological creatures, portraying them in variety of shapes, whether as young, long, fair-haired girls or condensed with other unrealistic creatures and floral elements in unexpected hybrid combinations. Even the compositions without explicit presentation of fairies have some mystic and vibrant atmosphere of fairy world. The titles of the paintings themselves, Fairy’s Supper, Fairies’ Offspring, Fairy Bathing, Fairy’s Castle, reveal the importance of the motif in Milanka Dinić’s art. Ornamented borders that frame the compositions above and below provide certain depth of the third dimension, where, like on a stage, secret and idyllic fairy life is unfolding. Viewing these mystic scenes of fairy dinner, bathing and magic ceremony of initiation of young fairies, we have the sensation of attending fairy habitat in idyllic, intact nature that is not designed for human eye. The exuberance and mystery of fancy world, materialized by authentic artistic procedure and fragmentary strokes conjures up traditional techniques of weaving and embroidery, thus making forms and colours move and weave the weft of another dimension of dreams through which our inner self is integrated into the painting.

Potential of the spiritual, power of imagination and complexity of motifs of angels and fairies inspire artists to instinctively examine the freedom of own interpretation of universal spiritual heritage within the process of expression their personal and intimate experience of the world, aspiring to the supernatural and the divine. In the interaction with this world of imagination, the artists satisfy their needs, both psychological and metaphysical.

According to contemporary scientific knowledge, the experience of supernatural, spiritual, divine and mystic, which our ancestors took as reality, is only the result of our fancy, the way to make our experience of the world universal, just the expression of our subconsciousness. However, the question is whether this rationalism has deprived us of our beneficial roots, since experience includes both the knowledge of reality and imagination. Naїve and marginal artists are often in discrepancy with the present. With their different, creative and inventive approach to the world, instinctive search for individual truth and archaic, primeval and subconscious depths, they remind us of the value of fantasy that guided a man on his route to civilization, thus making this passage through time reshaped by authentic invention. Therefore, it could be said that these artists are special angels and fairies in the world of modern art.

Ivana Jovanović