Oto Logo

Following his graduation from the Academy of Applied Arts in Belgrade in 1954, Oto Logo exhibited for the first time in a ULUS (Association of Fine Artists of Serbia) group exhibition in the same year, and then, independently, in the Graphic Arts Collective Gallery in 1957. He had noted exhibitions at the international art scene, such as the one in the Europe Gallery in Paris in 1965, and in the Dorsky Gallery in New York in 1966. After a solo exhibition in the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Belgrade, he was selected for the Yugoslav Selection at the 34th Venice Biennale in 1968 (together with Ivan Tabaković and Miroslav Šutej). Solo exhbitions in Liège, in Brussels (1970), Zurich (1972), again in the Dorsky Gallery in New York (1974) followed, as well as numerous others in the country and abroad. He had a retrospective in the Cvijeta Zuzorić Art Pavilion in Belgrade in 1986.

In Serbian visual arts criticism, controversial interpretations were formed with regard to typological and semantic classification as well as a problem-oriented physiognomy of Logo’s sculpture. Prompted by the aforementioned exhibition in the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, his conceptual position in the direction of “mechanomorphous“ character of sculptural forming was considered an important innovation in the context of postwar sculpture in Serbia, which was disputed by the claim of Živojin Turinski that this was a “symbolic and magic“ type of “his imagination“ emanated from “mythic sources“. Turinski’s opinion was in essence accepted by Lazar Trifunović (in the article “Roads and Crossroads of Serbian Culture“, Umetnost, 22, Belgrade, 1970), while Stojan Ćelić, in his introduction to the catalogue of the artist’s retrospective believed that Logo’s sculpture could be classified in the category of Vital Image (according to theoretical concepts of Herbert Read). Concerning his understanding of sculpture, the artist himself noted that in his “logical and gradual development… this idea about purification of sculpture was ever more maturing, about its reduction to plastic essence – to express a certain feeling in a purely visual language.“ (“A Poll Among Sculptors“, Umetnost, No. 22, Belgrade: Jugoslavija, 1970).

Oto Logo

Bronze Pharaah 2 (1966)

plinth – metal, 4 cm x 19 cm x 19 cm

bronze

41 cm x 40 cm x 30 cm