Ljubica SOKIC - Correspondence of 200 illustrated letters.

Ljubica SOKIC , known as Cuca SOKIC (1914.2009)

Correspondence with Olga Kechelievitch-Barbezat.

Exceptional set of more than 200 autograph letters signed to his friend Olga.

Around 1000 handwritten pages in Serbian and French.

Most of the letters are in quarto or folio format.

Between 1938 and 1945.

“I will work – I will work all the time. »

This correspondence, entirely unpublished, reveals hundreds of drawings, paintings, sketches and collages, previously unknown by the Serbian artist.

Sokic develops, within these letters, his passion for art and creation, the genesis of his pictorial work in the making. She shares her doubts, her influences and her inspirations from the great masters: “ Pablo Picasso is also considerable. He is a great man, a real force, a Spaniard, his painting really carries something grandiose within it. »

This thousand handwritten pages are a dive into the heart of the young artist's abundant creativity, and reveal the founding stones of the work in progress: “I worked too much. Really too much. I really put all my energy into the big picture. I feel like I can still paint a lot of things. But I won't finish it the day before the show. It's going to stay like this. »

Inspired by French culture, Cuca Sokic evokes the poets Rimbaud, Lautréamont and Baudelaire while questioning her friend Olga, who remained in Paris, about her fellow writers, such as Sartre, Camus, Cocteau, and about her husband Marc Barbezat and the first publications of Jean Genet.

The emblem allows a new and fundamental look at many aspects of each person's life and on the artistic world of the time: Cuca and his art in Belgrade; Olga and her theater in Paris.

Of course, the letters are often tinged with the anxieties of war, but they demonstrate perfectly the precedence of art and beauty in the face of the torments of the European conflict: “War, war again. Seriously. God bless us. The future is totally uncertain, even for the Devil, it seems to me. How will it evolve? What is the situation in Paris? »

We discover, throughout these lines, covered in drawings, Sokic's fierce desire to be understood as a renowned artist: “ I paint. I paint all day long. And it looks like I'm going to do something eventually. And one day, when I can paint what I want, then I will paint your big portrait. »

An exceptional collection which will further deepen the knowledge and biography of this immense Serbian artist.

Photographs and transcriptions on request.

Ljubica SOKIC is considered one of the most influential artists of the 20th century in Serbia. She attended high school in Belgrade, where Zora Petrovic was her teacher. She also learned painting with, among others, Beta Vukanovic and Ivan Radovic. Ljubica Sokić worked and presented her works in galleries in Paris between 1936 and 1939. Returning from Paris to Belgrade, she presented her works independently for the first time in 1939 at the Belgrade pavilion “Cvijeta Zuzoric”. She was one of the founders of the artistic group “Desetorica” (“The Group of Ten”). Also a professor at the Academy of Visual Arts in Belgrade between 1948 and 1972. In 1968 she became a corresponding member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and, from 1978, an academician. Besides painting, she created illustrations for children's books and magazines, and also worked in film. She died on January 8, 2009, aged 94, in Belgrade and was buried five days later at the Novo Groblje cemetery. The Pavle Beljanski Museum in Novi Sad maintains a collection of paintings by Sokic.

Olga KECHELIEVITCH-BARBEZAT (1913.2015) – Very little is known about Olga Kechelievitch. Originally from Serbia, she studied theater in Paris at the Dullin course at the end of the 1930s. As an actress, she played several roles in Paris and met great French writers and painters, such as Albert CAMUS, Jean Paul SARTRE , Jean COCTEAU, etc. In 1943, she married the French writer and publisher Marc BARBEZAT. This marriage is a decisive step for both. Indeed, Olga sent Barbezat a copy of “Le Condamné à Mort” written by the French poet Jean GENET. It was the beginning of a formidable editorial history with the launch, in 1941, of the publishing house “L'ARBALÈTE” which took Genet under its wing.