Dalibor Popovic Miksa was born in 1980 in Zagreb, Croatia. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Banja Luka, Bosnia-Herzegovina. He has participated in many collective and independent exhibitions in Banja Luka, Zagreb, Neustadt, and many other cities. Dalibor’s art focuses on play with light and shadow and scenes from everyday life.
His most commonly used techniques include drawing, watercolours, oil and acrylic. He recently created a series of watercolour paintings inspired by the atmosphere of Cuba and its old-timers. Outside of painting, he is also a musician who sings, plays guitar and saxophone. He works and lives in Belgrade.
Watercolour has always been a technique for the few chosen and courageous artists, with sure hands and free but infallible strokes. So-called “urban” watercolour paintings with motifs of city streets, buildings, pedestrians, the hustle and bustle of the city, cars, have become especially popular recently. Miksa has chosen Belgrade, the city in which he lives, as his most represented motif, which is especially endearing to Belgraders who follow his work. They are able to recognize details from their neighbourhoods and familiar parts of the city in Miksa’s work – the beauty of which they were not even aware!
Urban motifs are, in and of themselves, very difficult and thankless to paint because of the layered architecture and monotone colouring, which is why it takes a true master to create works like Dalibor’s, rich with movement and atmosphere. With the rhythmic alternation of light and shadow, warm and cold bluish tones, diverse forms and objects, the painter gives dynamics and beauty to the greyness of the city. The mist that wraps around the distant objects and the tender, slightly diffused strokes of his brush, build a poetic atmosphere of the city afternoon. The warm afternoon sun spreads down the street, people are rushing on with their tasks in long strides, cars are impatiently weaving through intersections, while decade and century-old buildings remain in their places, unaffected by what is going on around them.
Every now and then a branch or tree peeks out between the rooftops or over an old brick fence, just enough to announce that they have survived in this land of concrete and asphalt.
Dalibor Popovic has a calm, unobtrusive colouring of sheer, brownish, grey-blue tones with minimal accents in colour that come from the other side of the rainbow’s spectrum. His brush strokes are soft and his painting technique on moist surfaces leads to a faint mixing of the colours. The white background of the paper breaks through the painted surface in places, which allows the watercolours to breath, as painters say.
Even though they are his most numerous, urban motifs are not all Miksa has in his repertoire. Different landscapes, human figures, portraits, and objects from the painter’s nearest surroundings have an important place in his work. Miksa also works with acrylics, oil, and combined techniques and drawings. In any case, he is a young painter with an already established circle of admirers whose presence is felt within our city’s art community.
