About The Artist

Branko's appearance is the antithesis of what most people would think of an artist. He's a fully bearded giant of a man who speaks English slightly hesitantly as one would expect of a Serb who has lived here for less than 10 years.

His art belies his appearance. It is a rarely concordant blend of colours that ring with vibrancy and a peculiarly individualistic interpretation of a semi-abstract realism, the whole of which is eye-catching effective.

Although the colours are bold and imaginative, there is a harmony to the work that compels in spite of the fact that he looks like a Slav Goliath, he is an artist with a soul. To say nothing of a perceptive and very different style. He says he has never had formal art training and, in many respects, he opposes the concept.

He was born in a village 2 000m up in the southern area of former Yugoslavia, a state that has now changed, with much conflict, into six different countries.

He says that because of such high altitudes, the sky was more vivid, the clouds more starkly etched. This may be his opinion but, he adds, he immediately noticed that the sky over Pretoria was similar when he emigrated in 1993,

"In 1994 the trouble started in Yugoslavia. It was Christian versus Muslim, Serb versus Croat and, in spite of the fact that I am a Serb I was not interested in being part of the violence. I have a wife and, at that stage, two young daughters. If I had remained, I would have been expected to pick up a gun and shoot people. I was not prepared to do that."

"I came to South Africa because South Africa was the only country to grant us a visa."

"In the beginning, it was very, very difficult," he says. "For seven months I had to sell clothing for a fellow Serb who had a business here. But I believe that if you have an ability and are prepared to keep on trying, you must eventually have some success. Now my work is shown around South Africa. I am content."

Comparing his life as an artist in Yugoslavia and South Africa. His answer is perhaps courteously oblique. "We lived in a town known as Kragujevac, about halfway between the former capital Belgrade and the second city, Nis, It is close to the border between Bulgaria and Serbia. Indeed my wife is a Bulgarian. There was a proper artist colony and we often traveled to places such as Poland and other areas of Europe to absorb what was new in art and to try and improve our knowledge. "But people have always struggled in the area where I lived. You know the events that lead to the first World War happened near there. It has never been a wealthy district. The average wage was about R800 and I was getting the equivalent of R200 - R300 for my paintings I could not complain."

Branco started drawing and painting when he was a boy of 13 - "animals mostly" - and says that his style has evolved as he grew older. He notes that it has matured in the time he has been in South Africa but says that, no, it hasn't changed. His fondness for dramatic skies, skies that sometimes dominates his landscapes, come from his vivid memories of the skies above the village where he grew up and, of course, the Highveld skies, sometimes among the most dramatic in the world.

"When I see an image that strikes me I try to file it away in my memory."