Tragic death of a great Serbian painter: he was tortured and shot while the painting “The Collector” was drying on an easel (VIDEO)

Sava Shumanovic, Photo: Youtube / Printscreen

On the night between August 29 and 30, 1942, next to the old Orthodox cemetery of Sremska Mitrovica, along with 150 other citizens of Shida, the Ustasha killed the famous Serbian painter Sava Shumanovic.

Sava Shumanović was born on January 22, 1896 in Vinkovci. He has lived in Shido since he was four years old. As a young man he showed an interest in art, so in parallel to attending the Royal High School in Zemun, he began private lessons with Isidore Jung, who introduced him to impressionist painting and showed him the works of Cezanne and Van Gogh.

Sava’s father had ambitions for his son to become a lawyer, yet Sava graduated from the Higher School of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb in 1918, and only two years later left for Paris, where he studied with the cubist Andrea Lot and hung out with Rastko Petrović. Modigliani, Max Jacob and other artists.

During his second stay in Paris, he painted “Breakfast on the Grass” (1927), which garnered rave reviews, and later that year in seven days and nights he completed “The Drunk Boat,” a monumental masterpiece inspired by the song. Rambo’s name. and Jericho’s painting “The Jellyfish Raft.”

Nervous attack

The positive and negative reviews of Sava’s work have greatly weakened her mental health. After returning from Paris to Sid in 1928, Sava suffered a nervous breakdown.

In March 1930, he left Paris for good due to a misunderstanding with the jury and his health deteriorated again, and he returned to Belgrade, where he was treated for the next two years. Two years later, he definitely returned to Sid. He lived in seclusion, but painted intensely, especially landscapes and nudes. He worked in bathing and vintage cycles.

Style “as I know and can”

In his work he went through various phases, from cubism, through classicism and colorism, to develop a special style in the last decade, which is characterized by bright colors and a lyrical atmosphere. He personally called his style “as I know and can”. The last solo exhibition in Belgrade in 1939 had rave reviews, visits, and redemptions, which brought him great success and the reputation of one of the most important painters in Serbian painting.

His life ended very tragically …

During the Second World War, Sid became part of the Independent State of Croatia, the Cyrillic alphabet was a forbidden alphabet, so Shumanovic, in protest, instead of signing, put only the year of its creation.

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On August 28, he and 150 other Shida Serbs were arrested by the Ustashas. When they came for him, “he asked to get ready, took a bath, took things, kissed his mother’s hand and left forever, not knowing what they were accusing him of,” says art historian Gordana Krstić-Faj. All were taken to Sremska Mitrovica, where they were tortured and shot two days later.

At that time, the image of the “Picker” was drying on his easel. Most of his works, more than 400, are kept in the “Sava Shumanović” Gallery of Paintings in Šid, while in the Matica Srpska Gallery there are about 50 works.