The Painter Lazar Ličenoski

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The Painter Lazar Ličenoski

#5 Precisely at the transition from the thirties to the forties, “together” with many of his colleagues he returned from Paris. Some of them were in a pessimistic mood, uncertain, and disillusioned by their incapacity to compete with the astounding inventory of the Paris School, or were motivated by it and were brimming with enthusiasm. Confused but also enriched by the knowledge gained from the Paris museums, by what Europe offered to him as cultural heritage and fine arts aesthetics; weary of Lott’s teaching and Lenoir’s inflexible schedule of a “cooled” painting, Ličenoski leaned towards the impulse of the decade, towards what was being prepared by the new age of colour in the history of art. However, of crucial importance for the overall further artistic work of Ličenoski was his decision, immediately after his return from Belgrade, to organise his first individual exhibition in Belgrade, while painting in Macedonia “… I decided to go to Macedonia and paint there…” The exotic features of the ambient was the constant that unleashed his senses and feelings, and became an inexhaustible wellspring of inspiration. In the same way as Gogen was not capable of expressing himself completely until he discovered and mastered the exotic motifs, Ličenoski regarded the theme as something of substantial value in unravelling the enigma of the inspiration code. Notwithstanding, the motifs and actors of Ličenoski do not have literary and symbolic connotations, and they do not constitute the context of the philosophic posing of the issue, but are tokens of an existing scene from nation’s life and the surrounding landscape. They were expressed more like truth in his spirit rather than like an intentional message with symbolic meanings. These were the reasons why from 1929/30 onwards, his painting could be followed through this inevitable “Macedonian variant”.
#6 He placed Macedonian landscape in front of a serious painting problem, and enforced some shifts in the painting procedure rooting from the attitude to the motif, so that “… what is specific in it cannot be achieved if the painting is created in an impressionist manner, light, and air. All honours to Van Gogh, Monet, Sisley and Pissarro, but here we should approach the subject and not think of colour as a fresco. Utrillo paints a wall, a street, and not colour, but with colour…”
#7 In the course of his trip in western Macedonia in the period from 1929 to 1931 (and later as well), he created his entire painting repertoire: landscapes, still nature, meadows, chochek1F, fishermen, portraits… In order to specify the difference between the way of experiencing particular ambient, his individual perspective of Macedonian area needs to be elucidated. Only then do become clear his views in the pictorial harmony of his domestic atmosphere. “… Utrillo could not have helped me, he is bleak and is neither in touch with this intensive greenery and blueness of the mountains, nor with the redness of the ground and the house roofs. Here you need to find your way, which means, to approach the raised problem sincerely, to be honest and to paint what you see.”
Despite this, here it should be added “and what you feel” since the knowledge with an epilogue that Ličenoski left behind two and a half key decades of his work in Belgrade, producing the best works, painting in Macedonia at the time, speaks of the vigour of emotional feelings he cherished towards his country.
#8 World War II and the time until 1945 were the last years that Ličenoski spent in Belgrade, where he organised his last individual exhibition prior to the war in 1939, and in 1940 he displayed in Skopje at the Spring Exhibition (with N. Martinoski, T. Vladimirović, and V. Popović Cico). In spite of the specific social and political milieu, Ličenoski did not pull back from his existing repertoire of themes. Abandoning the nostalgic paraphernalia of the first coloured visions in his workshop in the Dušanova Street, with the last farewell, Ličenoski departed from Belgrade and returned to Macedonia (in January 1945) so as to pay back his painter’s debt and restore his immense creative powers out of the soil from where he “borrowed” so many landscapes, regions, pastures, fishermen, cupboards…

Tired of landscape variations and the already filled–in repertoire of themes, his brevity, unscrupulous young freedom, and spontaneity became mollified. Yet they stirred up the spark of the poppy fields in bloom, where he would weave one more floral rug – one of the ultimate pebbles in the mosaic of the scenery of the fine arts story.
A weaver of the Macedonian motif, Ličenoski searched for peace in the intoxicating fragrance of the “last poppies” depicted in the serene atmosphere of the “Artist’s Workshop in Galičnik,” from where for the last time he glanced warmly his source of eternity – Galičnik, his oblivion and sweet sorrow, nostalgia and joy, conscience and life, yearning to inhale once again the glassy brisk Miak air and the mesmerising smell of the sheepfolds, which remained to remind us of the creator of the most plastic ethnological picture of Macedonia.

Translated by: Kristina Zimbakova

#b
1. Kind of folk dance (translator’s note)

AuthorViktorija Vaseva Dimeska
2018-08-21T17:23:54+00:00 April 1st, 2000|Categories: Reviews, Gallery, Blesok no. 14|0 Comments