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Read blog posts about the life and pictorial oeuvre of Bosnian painter Mihridžan Kulenović Mimica.
Detail from drawing with ink ‘Scream’; cycle ‘Scream’; 42 x 30 cm; 1993
The Horrors of the Bosnian War
Mihridžan Kulenović Mimica stayed in Sarajevo during the siege that ravaged the city for almost 4 years.
Despite the incessant shelling of the city, Mimica kept his private art school ‘Dobrinja’ open, a bastion of culture against the barbarity of war.
During the years of the siege, Mimica used his art to denounce the brutality of the war and vividly depicted its horrors in a series of drawings with ink, part of the pictorial cycle ‘Scream’.
The drawings of the series depict old Bosnian tombstones, barbed wire and nightmarish manifestations.
The most poignant and ghastly drawing, entitled ‘Scream’, after the homonymous series, depicts a decomposing cadaverous human bust horrifyingly screaming. Next, a walnut bursting into pieces. In the upper left corner of the drawing a short caption: ‘Bosna, ratna 93. god.’ (Bosnia, war year 1993).
The war drawings represent much more than a mere artistic expression; they are an actual instrument of denunciation, the historical testimony of those who lived the daily nightmare of a war.
In the gallery below you can view some of the war drawings still in the family collection.
Leaflet from an exhibition of the ‘Scream’ pictorial cycle in Italy.
Gallery
