MERSAD BERBER: A RICH ALLEGORY OF BOSNIA

Abstract

UDK 75:929 Berber M.
         929 Berber M.

Mersad Berber (1940– 2012) is one of the most significant artists of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the second half of the 20^th century; an artist with overwhelming and voluminous opus who, with his rare talent, made the local fine arts scene an integral part of European and the international fine arts. His first and until now the only independent exhibition, Mersad Berber had in 1967 in the Art pavilion in Sarajevo.

Berber is a part of the very dynamic period of the cultural history of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which produced exceptional achievements in the fields of fine arts, literature, music, movie and drama. Berber was a forerunner of a young generation of graphic artists that opened up the local arts scene towards the world trends. At the same time he was one of the rare figures whose exceptional talent and knowledge were often exhibited in the most prestigious museums and art galleries. Berber’s art cycles in large format and combined techniques, inspired by the greatest painters of European fine arts from Renaissance to Modern period represent precursors to the post-modern sensibility and the culture of memories with characteristic thematic and compositional innovations. As the central metaphor of the greatest number of Berber’s art cycles is motif of horse, which is also one of the main animal symbols of many nations and cultures. And that was not, as Berber himself once put it, a representative horse, but rather a working, pack horse, of Bosnian mountains, a horse that was as such an inseparable part of every aspect of life: be it a hard field work, marriage, funeral or war. It was a horse in whose expressive strength, pain, imperfect beauty and noble suffering an entire biography of his people was reflected.

* The author of the text is the curator of the exhibition Mersad Berber: An allegory of Bosnia posted in Sarajevo City Hall (Vijećnica) from 6.7. to 6.9. 2017. This text is from the catalogue for the exibition. The exibition is a selection from the exibitin held under the same title at the Pera museum in Istambul between 15.2. and 6.5. 2017.