Braco Dimitrijevich, Triptychos Post Historicus Picasso Conceptual Art Silkscreen Gold Lithograph, 1989

Braco D.
Slobodan “Braco” Dimitrijević (born 18 June 1948) is a Paris-based Bosnian and Yugoslavian conceptual artist. His works deal mainly with history and the individual’s place in it.
This one depicts an artwork by Pablo Picasso, Woman in Chair.

He has exhibited internationally since the 1970s, including at the Tate Gallery in 1985. He has participated in documenta (1972, 1977 and 1992) and the Venice Biennale (1990 and 1993). His works are held in the collection of the Tate Gallery in London and that of the Centre Pompidou in Paris, among others. Solo museum exhibitions have taken place at The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg and Musée d’Orsay, Paris (2005); the Slought Foundation, Philadelphia (2007); Ludwig Museum, Budapest (2008), Musee d’Art Moderne de Saint Etienne (2009), Musee d’Art et d’Histoire Luxemburg (2011). He has participated in Documenta in 1972, 1976, and 1993 as well as the Venice Biennale in 1976, 1982, 1990, 1993, and 2009. His work can be found in approximately 70 public collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Tate, London; Musee National d’Art Moderne Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; and The Israel Museum, Jerusalem, among others.
Slobodan “Braco” Dimitrijević was born on 18 June 1948 in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, FPR Yugoslavia. His father was the painter Vojo Dimitrijević, one of the most famous modern artists in Yugoslavia. He started painting at the age of 5 and was featured in a TV show entitled Filmske Novosti (Film News) in 1957. His first conceptual work dates back to 1963.
He went on to study at Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, from which he graduated in 1971. He then studied at Saint Martin’s School of Art in London from 1971 to 1973.
In 1976, he wrote Tractatus Post Historicus, which formed the theoretical basis of his early work.
In the 1970s, Dimitrijevic gained attention when he began his Casual Passer-by series. The work features very big close-up photographic portraits of everyday people that were hung on buildings and billboard in different cities in Europe and America. He then went on to produce memorial plaques in honour of other people that he met. About the one he made for the Lucio Amelio’s “Terrae Motus” collection he said: “I Stopped the first man i saw in the street, explained to him what my work was and then asked him to be the model for the photo”. His work incorporates objects similar to Christo and Arman Fernandez. His work from the 1980s which joined animals and works of art would go on to become an exhibition in 1998 at the Paris Zoo that was visited by over a million people. “I was already exhibiting in London when Belgrade artists started being active. When I moved to London I met some people from the Foksal Gallery. But really, in the late ’60s I had no knowledge of conceptual art in other Eastern European countries. In 1971 Nena and I did a show entitled “At the Moment” in an alternative space in Zagreb. After a gallery show in 1969 I chose an ordinary entrance hall of an apartment building in the center of Zagreb and sporadically made exhibitions there which would last a few hours. “At the Moment” was a group show with artists like Giovanni Anselmo, Joseph Beuys, Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Sol LeWitt, Barry Flanagan, Laurence Weiner, Jannis Kounellis, Ian Wilson, etc. There were about 25 artists in all and the show later travelled to Belgrade. The review of the show by Studio International in London triggered some reactions and letters from artists in Czechoslovakia and Poland. The Moscow conceptual scene developed in the ’80s. I had no contacts with any of the Moscow artists at the time. For instance, I met Kabakov, a pioneer of the Moscow scene, during the “Magiciens de la Terre” exhibition, in 1989, and we immediately became friends.”
His Triptychos Post Historicus installations feature paintings by old or modern masters in conjunction with everyday objects and fruits/vegetables. More than 500 of these installations exist. Controversy arose when a man who visited the exhibition at the Tate realized that the paintings in question were not copies but the originals and reported this to The Times who then wrote about it.
Exhibitions
16 May – 16 August 2009, Louvre is my studio, street is my museum, Musée d’art moderne et contemporain de Saint-Étienne, Saint-Etienne, France