Serbia Today Interview Zoran Stosic Vranjski

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INTERVIEW OF THE WEEK
Interview, July 29, 2009
Zoran Stosic Vranjski
The painter of Cosmic Visions

By Ljiljana Samardzic

Sombor, July 29 ( Serbia Today) - In present times of economic crises we might forget sometime things that have no immediate practical and direct monetary value. Art is one of those things - it releases human spirit and gives it a freedom to fly to unknown imaginary places. Monetary value is not always associated with the true and good art. A man who never forgets his art, whose life is like a never completed painting, is Zoran Stosic Vranjski.

He is a painter of a recognized and highly rated opus, many times awarded for his work. Vranjski is for more than 50 years present on domestic and international art scene. A member of Association of Yugoslav Artists (Serbia and Vojvodina since 1967), Association of Writers from Vojvodina, the Serbian Association of Writers and regular member of the Matica srpska, Zoran Stosic, in an interview for Serbia Today speaks about his beginning, his meeting with “Apollo 15” crew, about his work and art itself.

In your work, cosmic motives prevail. What was the initial inspiration?

-Recently, the world celebrated 40 years of the first journey to the moon and first departure from our home planet. Forty years ago, this event shocked me. I wondered if it was possible that science made such a progress and that Moon is unhallowed. Those questions might seem strange, but I came from Vranje, a small town in Southern Serbia, where moonlight has a specific meaning; it is even more important than Sun and sunlight. However, after moon landing, that moonlight so important in love matters and our songs, for me lost its initial meaning.

That information, that enormous science success, gave me such an inspiration that for the past 40 years I paint solely cosmic motives. I also strongly claim that space is not black as science proves - there is in it some kind of artistic beauty.

No matter what, my works have always been related to happenings on Earth - when people were dying, I painted sufferers as cosmonauts, when people researched, I painted cosmic researches.

It is known that you received an award from NASA. How did that happen?

The “Apollo 15” crew visited Novi Sad in autumn 1972 and I asked them to receive a gift from me. I wanted that each one of them have one of my paintings. Due to that, I got a medal from NASA for painting cosmic motives and for the same reason, an award from The Smithsonian Institute. I was very proud of that medal, until 1999 when NATO attacked Serbia, my country. After lot of thinking, with sorrow in my heart, I decided to renounce NASA’s medal. That was very hard for me, since American science and American astronauts have left such a strong impact on my artistic work, but, in a way, I repaid debt to my suffering people.

On one occasion, Bela Duranci said that you, as painter, visited space before any astronaut. What made him say that?

Few months after “Apollo 15” visited Novi Sad, I received a written document from Provincial Government, which stated that the cosmonaut James Irwin said that moon’s surface at Hadley Rille looks exactly like my paintings. That gave me a great satisfaction.

When I met him in Novi Sad, I had to ask him if there is any coloring in space. His answer surprised me in a way: “I think that at the end of moon’s landscape, where surface meets the blackness of space, exists kind of brown color.”

Ten years ago, a Serbian Academic Tatomir Andjelic, who is PhD of celestial mechanics, said how fascinating is the fact that my paintings are so similar to NASA’s photographs from space.

Is there any danger in being preoccupied with one motive in such a long period?

If you have one production, as I do, you have to be new but not in every sense - the work is deepened. After 50 years of painting, there is no intensive and strong enthusiasm, but I consider myself more mature and concise and I do a lot of thinking while painting unlike before. However, I’m not trying to find out anything about new researches and photographs related to astronomy and universe. I don’t know anything about astronomy and I don’t want to know, because I think that if I see any photo it will handicap my work, but most of all - my imagination. Painting is a destiny, a nightmare, an involuntarily profession where you are in constant thinking, and in comprehension that your work is reality. Thank God, in my case it turned out to be so - Mr. Stosic told Serbia Today magazine.