Stevan Luketić
Monte Negro
Untitled / Forma viva 1964
welded steel / 180 x 220 x 25 cm / Cultural Centre Ravne
The sculptor welded the informalist texture composed of scrap pieces of steel plates, shavings and chips into a thick relief tissue of picturesque, emphatically tactile ‘image’ surface. On this materially rich plane, the visual address of the statue is subordinate to the interplay of light and shadow; it is intended exclusively for the frontal gaze of the spectator. The artist was not interested in the tectonics of masses or in the structural compositional solutions, but rather in the symbolic expressiveness of iron as a material of modernity.
Stevan Luketić was born on 8 November, 1925, in Budva, Monte Negro. From 1945 to 1949, he was an officer in the army. In 1950, he enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, where he studies sculpture and graduated in 1955 under the supervision of Prof Fran Kršinić. From 1952 to 1957, he collaborated with sculptor Vojin Bakić in his studio. In 1987, he became Full Professor at the Faculty of Cultural Studies in Cetinje. He held solo exhibitions in Budva, Podgorica, Borovo and Zagreb, and he participated in more than 200 group exhibitions, including those in Paris, Rome, Bari and Lugano. From 1949 until his death on 1 October, 2002, he lived and worked in Zagreb.
