Art & Literature

Vladimir Georgievski (1942 – 2017)

by Menka Karaspasovska, Curator& Art Historian   

Georgievski was born in Skopje, Republic of Macedonia in 1942. He graduated from the Fine Arts Academy in Belgrade, Republic of Serbia in 1968. He completed his Masters studies at this same Academy in 1970, under the tuition of Professor Mladen Srbinovic. From 1983-2005 he was working as a professor at the Faculty of Architecture of the University Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Skopje. He is a member of the Association of Fine Artists of Republic of Macedonia (DLUM). Georgievski participated in numerous group exhibitions in both his native country and abroad.

It is a pleasure and a great challenge to write a piece on Vladimir Georgievski`s opus; a multi-layered artistic thought and complex philosophical content characterize this author.

Each attempt to penetrate his complex concept and his personal mythology is in fact a courageous attempt to reveal his creative postulates. Georgievski believes in the uniqueness of man`s spirituality expressed in different forms, therefore his work abounds with an accentuated psychological drama.

In his studio, the author`s drama takes place in an attempt to paint man- the biggest secret of the known world. The images of his personal ‘archive’ change with the speed of film images. His ideas and thoughts carve through time and space. The master`s hands manage to blend the earthly and the heavenly in this space, to se pe rate light from darkness and to model his artistic world out of this ‘holy’ mixture – the arch – matter. Under the motto “let there be”, a painting was born, then another, a drawing and then another and so on… resulting in the impressive number of works in this treasury today. I feel that in this space the drama of life is happening. Here, the space functions faultlessly. Adam and Eva live there together, presented in the scene from the beginning of time, predestined to sin. Somewhere between them hovers the spirit of the Creator, filling the whole space of the painting with His spiritual presence. The Holy Trinity, (the incarnation of God in three different forms), the Holy Spirit– the dove hovering above us, showing us the bond between heaven and earth, the Annunciation, the Pieta, the drama of the Crucifixion (being born through death), and the holy relics and icons all communicate faultlessly in space and time, making us witnesses, but at the same time active participants in the drama that takes place over and over again .We are in the company of angels and cleaners, prophets and fornicators, sometimes alone, sometimes peeking through the crowds. Actually, here the whole world is on a plate: the actor from all layers of civilization (the Spanish nobleman Don Quixote, Sancho Pansa , Dostoyevski, Bach, Betove…), each of them in their own setting and with their own stage design. Let us not forget the signs of mans’existence: the old shoes, the bread…always present, in order to define the painting and to complement the drama of mans’ existence.

Vladimir Georgievski is one of the most important contemporary Macedonian artists; a painter with a vast, diverse and meaningful opus and above all, a wonderful person.