Radoslav Putnik

Last weekend (aug.4) was a holiday for Lily and me as we were participating in TIGOR gallery in Baredine Donje in Istria in so called "painters camp". There were more than 30 painters from Germany, Espania,Italy,Slovenia and Croatia. We all have enjoyed in nice day, marvelous landscapes of Istria, delicious dish and malvasia vine. Our host mr.Roni Jušić who is also a painter, organised nice collective exhibition on the end of the day. The exhibition will stay opend for public through august. Everybody is wellcome to Istria!

There is no doubt that consistency is an essential part of creativity of any painter, regardless of shapes and types of its appearance. The same goes for Radoslav Putnik. This consistency gives support to his credibility, while the variety of its appearance reveals the magic of creativity.

Our painter possesses this consistency; in him, there are three footholds and the right to sink and to further explore. Let us begin from the constancies on which he has, through the decades, built his aesthetics, focusing on the landscape, genius loci, crucial in defining individuality, as well as his peculiarity in shade, tone, color, fragrance, and sensation. Thus, locus or the place is that exceptional particularity of the landscape in which his authenticity is directly mirrored. Searching for these differences and distinctions of the landscape is the same as reading the grace of his mysterious face. Therefore, a painter who persists in this peculiar 'portraying' of visible and less visible scenery and space, is actually searching for his own essence, hidden in that spot from which light gushes out. Light, his second strategic foothold, light which illuminates the landscape scenery in a magic way. Putnik has conceived his poetics on these roots strongly tied to the local and exceptional in the landscape of Istria and its seaside, where light is exactly that constructive element on which the painter firmly and consistently strengthens his expression. Light is the vital part of his expression since it has clearly captured the space and powerfully ruled over the artistic expression. Once we realize which places and sites are in his focus, we should ask ourselves: how does the author do it? The answer is in the attentive focus on the exceptional effect of dawn breaking, of the earliest morning when soft and 'just-born' light, which unveils the soft outlines diving out, in a 'sfumato', of the passing night, revealing itself in the subtle luxury of the day which is to come only with its announcement. In a complete absence of man, in this exaltation of light being born anew, we recognize Istria's urban and rural views. The true "topos" through belfries verticals, the growth towards the sky of the urban tissue or through the solitude of lighthouses, against the peaceful horizontals of the sea and land calmness, or soft plumpness of laid islands. In the end, it is that particular moment when in the absence of dialogues between the light and shadow, all outlines reconcile in a unity of points of view and pleasure. His interpretation of the landscape is summarized without the symbolical, metaphorical or metaphysical dimension, and it is not narrative by its nature. It supports itself completely on the physical, material, named fact which the painter, with the help of light, almost fluidly dematerializes without decomposing it, and to this new, softened corporality gives the finesse of almost non-gravitational, aiming to a more spiritual, emotional, observational, and finally, to a painter’s synthesis. To the one which rationally deprives itself of the unnecessary, which turns to summaries not forgetting the painter’s starting point and its artistic partners, painting builders. Color through light and as light itself. Light and color over the active whiteness of the paper. And dry pastel with which he firmly and persuasively builds his inner/re/vision of the landscape. Of course, with a right to new appeals and new artistic quests.

Born in november 1950. in Subotica (Serbia). Diploma of veterinary medicine on University of Belgrade.