Nikola Žigon was born in 1958 in Ljubljana. He graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 1991. In the early phase of his career, he focused on drawing, video art, and art installations, which were presented to the public at the Gallery of the Student Cultural Center in 1992 and at the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1995. In the 2000s, he lived and worked in Paris, where he exhibited at the Gallery of the Yugoslav Cultural Center and the International Gallery. In 2002, he became an exclusive member of the prestigious Prom Gallery in Munich. His paintings are part of the permanent collection of the Würth Museum in Künzelsau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany, as well as numerous private collections across Europe and the United States. Since 2004, he has exhibited his white paintings at Prom Gallery in Munich, in Portugal, at Eurocentar Gallery in Belgrade, and at Progres Gallery and DKSG in Belgrade. In 2011, he presented the exhibition “Moonlight Mile” at the Apollonia Palace in Piran, and that same year he also exhibited at Arte Reale Gallery in Milan. The exhibition “As If It Once Was” in 2018 at X Vitamin Gallery was dedicated to his mother, actress Jelena Žigon. The act of remembering and reflecting on memories brought forth a bright and fresh energy, marking a new chapter in the artist’s creative life. In 2021, after years of living abroad, Nikola Žigon returned to the Belgrade art scene with the exhibition “The Smile Returned to the City”, held at the Žigon family home in Senjak, Belgrade. His most recent series, titled “Paintings in E Minor”, inspired by music, features large-format works exhibited at Štab Gallery in 2023, and smaller formats shown in “One and Only” Gallery in Portonovi and “Sanjaj” Gallery in Belgrade in 2024. In these works, the artist embraces color while remaining faithful to form, figure, and gesture, seeking an equal presence of all elements in embodying the painter’s psychophysical presence within the artwork.
