Živko Stojsavljević

Who was Živko Stojsavljević?

Živko Stojsavljević was a Serbian painter who received his first painting lessons in Zadar high school, and he continued his education in Italy. He lived in Florence and Rome, where he graduated from two prestigious art academies between 1918 and 1924: Royal Institute of Fine Arts in Florence and Higher Royal Institute of Fine Arts in Rome. After returning to his homeland, for a while he lived in Knin; after that, he worked as a professor of fine arts in several towns along the Adriatic coast and in Serbia. In 1931 he settled in Belgrade. He worked as a drawing teacher in many different Belgrade grammar and high schools.

Even as a student, he was interested in decorative wall painting, working alongside his professor, Giulio Bargellini on interiors of public buildings in Rome. He continued painting and decorating interiors of churches throughout his entire career. Nevertheless, Živko Stojsavljević’s s greatest achievements were paintings which depicted lives of peasants and fishermen, coastal landscapes, paintings of Belgrade and its vicinity, as well as places in which he decorated churches, still nature, portraits, and paintings of far away cities. Most of the landscapes were painted in direct contact with nature, under the open sky. In works which depict the view from his studio he achieved the authentic expression – a characteristic combination of still life and landscape. During his career, which spanned over more than five decades, he painted several hundreds of oil paintings and water colors.