Đorđe Andrejević Kun (; 31 March 1904 – 17 January 1964) was a Serbian and Yugoslav painter and graphic artist, a participant in the Spanish Civil War and the National Liberation War in Yugoslavia and a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He is known for his paintings, graphic designs and woodcuts. He designed the coat of arms of Belgrade, the emblem of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the emblem of the Socialist Republic of Serbia and several Yugoslav orders and medals.
Biography
Early life Kun was born on 31 March 1904 in Wrocław, Kingdom of Prussia (now Wroclaw, Poland), to Veljko Andrejević Kun and his wife Gertruda as the fourth of five children. Veljko was a graphic artist who moved to Germany in 1892 where he studied engraving. Đorde started displaying artistic talent at an early age. The Andrejević family moved to Belgrade in 1914, where Veljko opened a printing house in Balkanska Street. After completing primary school, Đorđe completed four grades of high school and, in accordance to his father's wishes, learned the printing trade.
Studies and early works
Between 1921 and 1925, Kun studied painting at the Royal Art School in Belgrade, where he was taught by painters Petar Dobrović, Ljuba Ivanović and Milan Milovanović. Among his classmates were Stanislav Staša Beložanski, Anton Huter, Momčilo Moma Stevnović, Stanka Lučev and others. Milovanović and Ivanović in particular influenced Kun's artistic development, which is why later in his artistic career he wavered between form and color and between painting and graphics, while Dobrović had an influence on his social involvement.
Thanks to a Belgrade benefactor, merchant lijia Rankic, he received a scholarship to study painting in Italy. For two full years, between 1925 and 1927, he stayed in Rome, Florence, Milan and Venice, where he studied, painted and visited museums and galleries. During his training in Italy, he painted copies of Renaissance and Baroque paintings, namely those of Michelangelo, Tītian, Veronese, and Tintoretto, which he sent to his benefactor. After Italy, he continued his third year of studies in Paris, where he studied contemporary artists Cézanne, Modigliani and the Bulgarian painter Gilles Paskin. During this period Kun started selling his first paintings, which are kept in private collections.
After returning to Belgrade in 1929, Kun took part in the autumn exhibition of Belgrade artists. This was one of his first public appearances. Critics praised Kun's skillful composition, but criticized his use of dark, earthy colors. During the next two years, he participated in spring and autumn exhibitions at the Cvijeta Zuzorić Art Pavilion in Kalemegdan, where the audience could see about a dozen of his compositions, portraits, still life paintings, self-portraits and landscapes. In February 1931, he had his first solo exhibition at the Art Pavilion, dominated by two themes — still life and self-portraits.
In September of the same year, he participated in an anonymous competition to design the coat of arms of Belgrade, in which 56 artists from all over Yugoslavia took part. The competition ended in November, and Kun's work under the title Crvena trojka (Red Triptych) was awarded the first prize of five thousand dinars. His design became the official coat of arms of Belgrade, which is still used today. The same year Kun married Nada Ratković, an art history student at the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, whom he met in 1925. During her studies, Nada was a member of a Marxist Club and, due to her communist activities, was arrested and brought before the State Court, but was released due to lack of evidence. Đorđe and Nada first lived in Čubura, and in 1935, after their daughter Mira was born, they moved to Kun's studio in the attic of the Vojislav llić Elementary School in Vračar, where they lived until 1937.
Social artistry
While an apprentice in his father workshop, Đorde liked to socialise with the workers, and he subsequently joined the Association of Graphic Workers. In 1923 he painted a poster for the International Workers' Day celebration, which was printed and put up around the city and in streetcars. Kun's interest in left-wing ideas and communism most likely arose during his stay in Paris, where he received books on Lenin and the Soviet Union from friends. Through his wife Nada he began to associate with communists and members of the then illegal Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ). Left-wing ideas did not affect his artistic expression prior to 1934. The conference of the International Association of Revolutionary Writers, held in 1930 in Kharkiv, and the First Congress of Soviet Writers, held in August 1934 in Moscow, defined the concept of socialist realism, an artistic style with the aim of spreading communist and socialist ideas, which highly influenced Kun's artistic output from that point onwards.
From 1931 to 1934, Kun was a member of the art association Oblik, one of the most significant art groups in interwar Yugoslavia, whose members included painters Branko Popović, Petar Dobrović, Jovan Bijelić, Sava Šumanović, Veljko Stanojević, Milo Milunović and Marino Tartalja. As a member of Oblik, Kun exhibited his works until 1934, when, together with a group of like-minded leftist artists, he founded the art group Život, whose members were painters Mirko Kujačić, Dragan Beraković, Đurđe Teodorović, Radojica Živanović Noe, as well as sculptors Vladeta Piperski and Stevan Bodnarov. They defined their art as "combative realism" and were against I'art pour l'art, accepting socialist realism as their artistic direction. They maintained ties with the Zagreb group Zemlja, which was banned in 1935. A group of artists, led by Bodnarov, Beraković, Kujačić and Kun, submitted a Resolution on the financial situation of artists, demanding certain concessions for renting the exhibition space of the Kalemegdan Art Pavilion and changing the selection criteria of works for their exhibitions. Their demands were rejected and they subsequently boycotted the 1936 autumn exhibition, and later that year held a boycott exhibition at the Technical Faculty in Belgrade.
Kun aimed to depict the daily life of workers in his art as a way to fight against class injustice. He returned to making graphics which he deemed the most suitable medium. In the summer of 1934, together with his wife, he traveled to Bor with the aim of making a "collection of graphics depicting miners". The mine in Bor, then owned by a French company, was not fenced off and Kun could freely visit the mining facilities; the open pit and the smelter, as well as workshops. While collecting material for his work, he was caught by a mining supervisor who reported him to the police. At the police hearing, he was warned not to visit the mine without a permit and was ordered to leave the city. He took refuge in Zaječar, and then illegally returned to Bor. He spent a month collecting material, taking photographs and drawing sketches of the mine and its workers.
After returning to Belgrade, he created a set of graphics titled Blood-soaked Gold (Krvavo zlato) with the aim of displaying the lives of Yugoslav miners and workers. Although the collection was finished, he was unable to find a printer in Belgrade who would print his work. He printed 10 copies of the collection in his studio in 1936. With the help of architecture student Voja Midić, he reached printer Jovan Luks from Stari Bečej, who agreed to print the collection. In January 1937, the first 250 copies were printed, and soon after, a second edition of 1,000 copies was published, which the writer Jovan Popović wrote the foreword for. The map of graphics depicting the difficult daily life of miners and arduous work, as well as the dissolute life of profiteers, was banned by the Belgrade City Administration in February 1937.
Involvement in the Spanish Civil War
In 1936, international anti-fascist forces started joining Spanish Republicans in the fight against Francisco Franco's nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War. In November of the same year, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia sent an invitation to all Yugoslav communists and anti-fascists to join the fight. between May and June 1937. students at the University of Belgrade organized a week of solidarity with the Spanish people, during which money was collected for the aid of volunteers leaving for Spain. For the event, Kun painted the character of little Anita from Dušan Matić's poem Number 4-21-35 (Broj 4-21-35), which the student youth wore on their lapels. Kun himself decided to go to Spain. As the authorities of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia prevented Yugoslav volunteers from leaving, Kun was first refused a passport by the police, but managed to request a joint passport with his wife Nada, in order to go to Paris where the World's fair was being held at the time. With the help of a lawyer working for the police, he received a passport and traveled with his wife to Paris in July 1937. In Paris, Kun had meetings with Bora Baruh who worked in the Committee helping Yugoslav volunteers reach Spain, as well as volunteers Radivoj Uvalić, Rodoljub Čolaković and others. He stayed in Baruh's studio, where Ljubica Sokić also painted at the time.
After waiting for two months Kun set off for southern France with smaller group, from where they crossed illegally into Spain. Immediately after his arrival, he underwent military training, during which he was chosen as the commander of Yugoslav volunteers. After completing the training, they were assigned to the International Battalion Đuro Đaković and sent to the front in Albacete. During his stay on the front line, in addition to participating in battle, he made drawings with motifs from the war. Later, at the insistence of Božidar Maslarić and Rodoljub Čolaković, he was transferred to the battalion headquarters. Later, as a cultural worker, he was transferred to the Headquarters of the 129th International Brigade. In Spain, he collaborated with Croatian journalist and writer August Cesarec and made seven drawings to illustrate his manuscript, published in Toronto in 1938 under the title Spanish Encounters (Španjolski susreti), a book of encounters with people and cities. In May 1938, by order of the KPJ, he was transferred from the front in Teruel to Barcelona, where he was informed that he had to return to Paris. In Barcelona, he had a meeting with Kosta Nađ. As he had no documents, he had to cross the border illegally.
In Paris, Kun stayed with Baruh again before returning to Yugoslavia in 1938. As he had a passport with which he traveled to the World's fair, he returned to the country legally. All of his drawings were left in Paris and later sent to Yugoslavia by mail. He lived with his family in the house of his father-in-law Mihajlo Ratković at Kotež Neimar where he painted, collecting money for the publication of his graphics from Spain. At the end of 1938, he managed to find a printer who printed the collection titled For Freedom (Za slobodu) in January 1939, which contained 12 graphics depicting the Spanish Civil War. Immediately after the set was first printed, Kun was arrested together with the printer. He spent a month in the Glavnjača prison, run by the Belgrade City Administration. As the police were unable to find proof of his stay in Spain, he was released. During the arrest, the police confiscated and destroyed almost all copies of For Freedom. A preserved copy was used to print new editions in March 1946 for the Congress of Spanish Fighters of Yugoslavia. In addition to this collection, Kun also made two paintings depicting the war — Execution (Streljanje) from 1939 shows a group of captured patriots standing in front of fascist soldiers on the execution ground, while No pasaran, which was completed in 1948, shows a woman standing with a rifle, with an inscription behind her reading "No pasaran" (It will not pass).