Ratko Lalić's gaze wandered towards phenomena in nature that only he could notice, experience, make beautiful, and teach us about their values. His thoughts and heart were tied to the withered sunflower, the forgotten dried twig, the clump of earth by the roadside, the yellowed stubble, the intertwined bushes, the abandoned raven's nest, the dried grass blades sprouting from the snow-covered black soil. How much love for life there is in an artist who gives the right to beauty to scenes that, in the real world, fill the soul with sadness and remind us of the inevitable passage of time, of the withering of hopes, of the drying up of everything once believed in, of the somber announcement of the end that inevitably comes. It is easy to love the proud, mature sunflowers, proudly turned to the sky, with golden petals and bold stems, but Lalić paid tribute to the withered sunflowers, bent and weary, blackened and powerless. He taught us to understand and connect with the relaxed, thin necks barely holding the distorted, lifeless sunflower heads; he introduced us to the beauty of everything in nature in all stages of its existence. He showed us that what is ugly from one perspective can, if approached with understanding and sincere kindness, conquer us with the depth of its aesthetics, based on layers of the real, the lived, the accumulated, the sincere and painful, confronted with finality.

Rajna Dragićević

Excerpt from the article in Politika, "The Painter of Transience and Nostalgia," August 2023.

Photographs by Srđan Janković