On this day, one of the greatest Serbian artists of the 20th century was shot dead.

Sava Shumanovic, Photo: Youtube / Printscreen

On this day, August 30, 1942, the Ustashas in Sremska Mitrovica rubbed Sava Shumanović, one of the best Serbian painters between the two wars. His great compositions “Breakfast on the Grass” and “Drunken Boat” are among the most significant works of modern Serbian painting.

Sava Shumanović was born on January 22, 1896 in Vinkovci. Milutin and Persida’s parents came from prominent civic Sid families. When Sava was four years old, the family returned to Sid. When she was ten, she went to school in Zemun, where she enrolled at the Royal High School. He showed interest in art even then and enrolled in Professor Isidore Jung’s painting course. After graduating, he returned home determined to make painting his life’s calling. In 1914, Sava enrolled in the Zagreb Faculty of Arts and Crafts, after which he could become a teacher.

He attended the first year in Professor Oton Iveković’s class, and the next three years in Klement Crnčić’s class. The school work included studying according to the old masters, Dürer, Michelangelo, Rubens, and Rembrandt. He continued to study the Impressionists, who interested him while he was still at Zemun. He regularly participates in school exhibitions. The best grades and grades were recorded on the certificate of complete schooling. In July 1918 he participated in the final joint exhibition of his school. That same year, in Ulrich’s salon, he organized his first solo exhibition with Bogumil Car. For illustration of the literary magazine Juriš. In addition, he works as a set designer at the National Theater. In May 1920 he organized his second solo exhibition at the Museum of Arts and Crafts.

It was presented with canvases denoting symbolism and secession, then common in Croatian art. The exhibition received positive reviews. He sold many paintings and, with the support of his father, made his way to Paris in the fall, the then center of artistic events in Europe. The first stay in Paris lasted only a few months. He enrolled in a course with the prominent art educator and artist Andre Lot, and was one of his best students. Shumanovic’s teacher belonged to the current of analytical cubism, constructivism. This is the moment when the most significant cubist-oriented paintings in the history of our painting were created; Sculptor in the study, Still life with clock, Sailor on the dock, Port agent. Andre Lot’s influence on Shumanovic was very great and was present throughout his life.

In the summer of 1921 he returned to Zagreb, and in October of the same year he organized an exhibition of paintings created in this new style borrowed from Lot in the Art Pavilion. Conservative critics and the Zagreb public did not understand his new works. Sava Shumanović spent the next four years in Zagreb, tirelessly trying to change those conservative and provincial attitudes in Zagreb art circles. It was then that the texts Painter on painting and Why I love painting by Pusen were written, which are very important to understand his ideas and his art.
His return to Paris was made possible by the sale of twenty paintings to the lawyer Dorić in 1925. Today, they are kept in the Matica Srpska Gallery in Novi Sad. That second stay in Paris took place in humiliating conditions in which Sava Shumanović received a visa. He had student status, received a limited residence permit, a ban on selling paintings, re-enrolled in a course with Andre Lot. He exhibited at the Paris Autumn Salon in 1926. Renowned French magazines, dealing with art, write about Sava Shumanović and reproduce his paintings. He then painted Breakfast on the Grass, a self-portrait with four nudes in the landscape, now in the Pavle Beljanski Memorial Collection in Novi Sad. He participated in the painting of the cult cafe “La Coupole” in 1927. Recently, an exhibition of his works, which are located in this bar, was held in Paris, and the French fashion magazine Vogue ranked him among the five most important.
In the same year, he painted his most significant work, The Drunken Boat. This painting of monumental dimensions was created in a convulsive work in just seven days and seven nights. She exhibited at the Salón de los Independientes and the critics’ criticism was divided. Today, the Drunk Ship painting is the pride of the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade.

Difficult working conditions, bad reviews and other personal events led the artist to nervous exhaustion, so in 1928 he returned to Sid to recover. It was then that the first images of the landscape around Shida – Sremska Krajina were created, through landscapes where it records the unique light and atmosphere of the homeland. He devoted much more to this subject when he later returned home forever. In September 1928, he exhibited paintings created in Paris at the New University of Belgrade. He did well with both the critics and the public, he sold most of the paintings and headed to Paris again. It was his last stay in his favorite city. It lasted just over a year. It was then that the masterpieces were created: The Red Carpet, The Lying Female Nude, The Luxembourg Park in Paris.
At his home in Shido, Shumanovic devoted himself entirely to painting. In the early years he painted nudes from sketches that he brought from Paris and landscapes from his immediate surroundings. These remained dominant themes for the rest of his life. Father Milutin died in 1937. Then Sava took over the management of the family property. Based on preserved documentation from that period, it can be noted that he took this obligation extremely seriously, as well as everything else in life. He studied English, attended dance classes, visited an exhibition of 19th century French painting, which he was invited to at the National Museum in Belgrade, constantly painted and prepared for a large exhibition.
In September 1939 he organized a large one-man exhibition at the New University in Belgrade, where he exhibited 410 paintings. Satisfied with the success of the exhibition, he returned to Sid and continued to work with great vigor, despite the war that had just begun. He was not lucky enough to quietly dedicate himself to what he loved most and knew best.

The Second World War also came to little Šid, which in 1941 became part of the Independent State of Croatia. The Cyrillic alphabet then becomes a forbidden alphabet. Sava Shumanović stops signing his paintings. In a senseless Ustasha action on the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary on August 28, 1942, he was arrested and shot with a large group of Shidjans two days later at Sremska Mitrovica and buried in a mass grave. This is how one of the greatest Serbian painters of all time tragically ended his life.