Naïve Painting, Eastern Serbian School, Woodcutters, Painting Signed Dragan Milhaïlovic

Oil on canvas, 55 cm x 38 cm, sold with its wooden frame, signed lower right "Dragan" for the Serbian artist Dragan Mihailovic. The painting is in the pure tradition of naive art from the Eastern European school, particularly from the former Yugoslavia. Sold with an invoice/certificate. Perfect condition. Born on February 6, 1950, in Belgrade, Dragan spent his childhood and youth in his family home in Ostruznica, located about ten kilometers from Belgrade, on the right bank of the Sava River. His love of art dates back to his earliest childhood. He presented his first works to the public at the age of twenty-two, during his first stay in Paris. After a brief period in Montmartre, the only open-air studio recognized worldwide, he began a very fruitful collaboration with the Parisian galleries “Au Grillon,” “Galerie 93,” “Galerie Mona Lisa,” and “Naïfs du Monde Entier” (Naïve Artists of the World). With naïve painting booming in the 1970s, he became a regular exhibitor at the most prestigious Parisian art fairs (Salon des Indépendants, Salon d'Automne, etc.) and other major group exhibitions. Inspired by the art of the then-Yugoslavian naïve painters, he quickly succeeded in infusing his paintings with soul and transforming them thematically into fairy tales, thus abandoning the stereotypical themes to which most naïve painters had previously resorted. He achieved his greatest success in Canada where, from the opening of the “Galerie Jeannine Blais” in 1985, he exhibited his work. with several recognized European and Canadian self-taught painters, and became very well-known in this region of North America, his works being the most sought-after. During the period 1992–1998, at the International Naïve Art Competition, organized four times by the “Galerie Jeannine Blais” in collaboration with TV7, with the participation of about one hundred painters from around the world, he won the Grand Prize awarded by the jury each time. On this occasion, the Musée National de la Ville de Québec organized his solo exhibition from June to September 1999. In 1995, the “Galerie Jeannine Blais,” to mark its tenth anniversary, organized a solo exhibition and presented about fifty of his paintings, as well as a luxurious monograph entitled “DRAGAN.” This exhibition was devoted to his entire body of work executed from 1973 to 1995, while in 2002, the gallery organized its fifth solo exhibition and published a A catalogue representing his paintings from the period 1999–2002. While pursuing his career in Canada, he continues to collaborate with fellow painters and with organizers of European exhibitions, and exhibits his works regularly in Belgium, Spain, Italy, Poland, and throughout France. His works can be found in numerous private collections, as well as at the “Musée d'Art Naïf – Max Fourny” in Paris and the “Musée de Sherbrooke” in Canada.