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In 2000, it will be 30 years since Lazar
Drljacha died. He was a great painter from Bosnia & Herzegovina. However, he would not
have allowed us to place him into so narrow a framework as he regarded
himself as an inhabitant of the Universe. He did not speak of himself solely as a
painter. He would rather say that he was a locksmith, a mechanic, a technician, an
architect, a fisherman, a metal worker, a grass cutter, a trapper, a gatherer of forest
fruits, a stoker, a brandy maker and who knows what else. The fact is that he has
remained known, famous, to future generations thanks to his paintings and his
extraordinary lifestyle of an individualist and man of nature.
He was born in 1882 in the little hamlet of Blatna village near Bosanska Krupa, to a poor family. Luckily, they were able to realize that their home was blessed with a child of great talent and they decided to give him good education regardless of their own difficulties and hardship. He completed his schooling in Sarajevo - he became a qualified locksmith and the famous Technical School. he studied architecture and the academy of visual arts in Vienna, and he lived and worked in Paris. His painting was so good that he generated admiration of arts experts all over the world. He had many exhibitions in Europe. He said once that he painted because he loved doing so and that he exhibited his works only in order to survive.
Throughout his life he lived as a very poor man in the material sense of the word, but he was a veritable treasure of spiritual wealth. One must especially stress his unique relationship with nature. He lived in nature, he painted motifs from nature, although he had great successes with his remarkable portraits. After a long period of world wide wanderings, his banishment to Sardinia where he spent 4 years of World War One, he returned home to his Blatna village.
He spent further four years hunting and fishing, he sailed down the Una river in a boat he made himself. He lived in a hut he made with his own hands. Living free unfettered, in nature and off what it gave him, he discovered a completely new world, a world outside what we call civilization and he felt much better after all those years of wandering and suffering that he had left behind. This time was to be crucial for his future life. Early in the spring 1930, Lazar Drljaca arrived in the town of Konjic in a two-wheel carriage he had made himself. In 1931 he finally decided to live near the Boracko Lake. Until the outbreak of World War Two he lived in the Shantich Villa. However, during the II World War war he had to move to a mountain hut at Kotardze. In the fire that took place in the hut in 1946, all his paintings but one were gutted.
Lazar moved to a hut at Jazve at Borci. It was later that the Konjic municipal authorities gave him the Shantich Villa and he lived there until his death in 1970. The painter was never to overcome the loss of majority of his paintings to the fire. It was in a moment that the fruits of his most prolific painting period had disappeared in a moment. Lazar used to speak thus of his life at the foothills of the Prenj mountain, on the banks of the Boracko Lake in the pure and fabulously beautiful natural surroundings of Borci: "I have come to know many phoenixes and medicinal plants and flowers. As I remained faithful to the mountain and freedom, men and women, all of them, loved me and helped me. Various bandits stole my paintings in the war. I was left naked and barefoot. Luckily, I had two rather large canvasses left with oil paintings on them. I scraped the paint off and I made some clothes for myself from those canvasses." He learned how to make dyes and paints for his paintings from natural materials that he knew where to find on the Prenj mountain.
His personal needs were modest; he fed himself on what he caught et the lake and the Neretva river, what he gathered in the forest or dug out of the earth. From time to time he world work for some well-to-do inhabitant of Borci. Having been paid for his labor, he would do his peculiar shopping. He would buy as follows: two spoonfuls of oil, twenty grains of rice, two spoonfuls of sugar. In case the shopkeeper gave him more - he would angrily leave the shop having abandoned his shopping. There were few homes he would visit or ask for any kind of help - although all the inhabitants of Borci and Konjic would have been delighted if the famous painter and hermit would honor them by crossing their doorstep. After 1968. he never left his Borci.
The burden of the many years and of lonely life left their trace. Towards the end of 1970 he wrote to his Mostar friend Mirko Bruk asking him to ask for doctor Hlubna's help, as, he said: "... am dying of the burden of life. He has always protected me, and now I find myself at the edge of life. I am asking him to phone the Mayor of Konjic Ilija Krtalic and to tell him to appoint a strong worker who would come to me every day to fetch some water and bring firewood in." Lazar Drljaca died on 13th July 1970 at 9:30. As far back as in 1932, he said this about himself: "You see, after Rome and Paris where I worked and had exhibitions, I became a real, hardened, Bosnian peasant. In fact, I am a Bogumil." His only wish was to be buried like a Bogumil. And on the graves of Bogumils stone slabs are placed, called the stecci (stechtsi).
And now, 39 years later, is anyone going to fulfill the only wish the modest painter, who indebted us with his great art, had - to have his grave marked as befits a Bogumil - with a massive stone stecak - a slab. The text
written by: Mirjana Kapetanovic, Konjic, BA,
A message...an invitation... to all who feel about Bosnia as their Bogumil past... Let us renovate the Shantich Villa, let us visit the grave of Lazar Drljacha on 13 July 2000 and bow. This web page is my special contribution to the Bogumil, artist of life Lazar Drljaca, to the town of Konjic, to (the hamlet of) Borci, to Bosnia&Herzegovina, to the BAlkans, to the planet Mother Earth, as I, Rudolf Bosnjak, feel and think the same as he, as a Bogumil. Today, on June 13th, 2000, I read for the first time the text by Mirjana Kapetanovic about Lazar Drljaca and the wonderful book, 'Prisoner of Beauty' by Sefko Hodzic and, looking at the photograph of Lazar by the steccak at the hamlet of Borci, I felt such close connection to that man ... In May 2000, I visited the Borci, the Shantich Villa and the Boracko Lake and saw this stechak (stone slab); I stood on the other side of that steccak and ...
took a photograph of myself...oblivious to the fact that such a photo existed and that this book entitled 'Prisoner of Beauty' existed too ... but our Bogumil ancestors know all ... and the Bogumil cosmos knows all ... and I am here to continue, and you are here to go on from where Lazar Drljaca stopped ... I visited the Shantich Villa again, in June 2000. I visited the grave of Lazar Drljacha ... there is something there that draws me to live there .. that everything be as it used to be .. while Lazar was alive ... the Shantich Villa is ruined, it needs renovation. And this message is an invitation to to renovate the Shantich Villa and to salvage the remaining stechaks in the territory of Bosnia & Herzegovina and our spiritual and cultural heritage, the treasures of our BOGUMIL ancestors ... they are our only real ancestors, let us respect them as this is the only way for us to have our future.
For a long time I have been seeing and old man with long hair and a long white beard...I have told of these dreams to some of my friends, but they do not believe me ... By now I have realized, recognized, understood and worked out looking at his paintings that this is probably the same Lazar Drljacha, exactly as he was when he was alive ... defiant .. he wants to tell me something ... I think I already know what and as for the rest, you will learn soon ... Renovation Board - more details, click HERE My research into the Bogumils, their drawings, pictures and figures on the stechak stone slab monuments is linked to my theory of celestial origins of the Bogumils and to all of us, human-digital beings, Who were those Bogumils Click here, write friends e-mail address and send this web address as e-mail message. Sign Guest book Read Guest book FIRST PAGE Tales of Lazar MANY THANKS for TRANSLATION to Mr. M.T. Posjetilac od 10
July 2000 |
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Copyright
(C) June 2000, Sarajevo, BA, All rights reserved Rudolf Bošnjak. |
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