Kosara Bokšan

Sharing life and her artistic years with Petar Omčikus, Kosara Bokšan has a biografy with numerous common information with him: participation in the Zadar Group, the first public appearance in the exhibition of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia in 1950, membership in the Group of Eleven with whom she exhibited in 1951. She staged her first solo exhibition in Belgrade in the ULUS Gallery in 1952, shortly before she moved to Paris (where they both arrived in May of same year). Together with Omčikus, she spent time in Corsica in 1954, which had consequences for their transformation in painting practices which would soon follow. Her first public appearance in Paris was marked by her painting entitled Orange Abstraction, exhibited at the Prix de Dôme show in 1954. She did her fully abstract painting during 1953-1954 giving them the following titles: Abstraction in Red (1953), the said Orange Abstraction, and Harmony in Yellow, as well as Composition, all three painted in 1954, of which two were of the same format, being two variants of the same motif, Informel I and Informel II (1955), by which she considerably changed her painterly language in comparison to her preceding Belgrade period. Judging by their titles, the said paintings were made under an impression of current Parisian art events under the sign of Art Informel. Unlike the Abstraction in Red and Orange Abstraction (1954) paintings made within the direction of moderate geometric abstraction, the first version of the painting Informel had characteristics of a free treatment of an amorphous, lit and colored mass, which is set itself apart as if it is emerging from the surrounding considerably darker background. The last abstract painting made by Kosara Bokšan, was Autumn Painting made in 1957-1958, and was by type congenial to Omčikus’ Tree in Blossom. Having definitely quit the area of abstraction, Kosara Bokšan would from the mid-1960s on move towards her characteristic figurative symbolic representations in which she would achieve her individual, recognizable painterly physiognomy.

Kosara Bokšan,

Enformel I (1955)

oil on canvas,

92 cm x 73 cm