Obradović Milutin

I firmly believe that there are surfaces and spaces in this world which I HAVE TO FILL IN.

My father has called me Milo since I was a child. I was named after my proud grandfather. I have always wanted to be „engaged upon something” rather than do a professional job.My occupation is painting, but my job title is a teacher. Whenever I can, I keep it to myself. My mother ardently wanted me to become a doctor. This was her wish until my name started appearing in newspapers followed by the photographs of my early works.Every childhood is beautiful. Some childhoods are beautiful just because they were childhoods, but mine was brimming with laughter, love, sincere hugs and it was strongly determined not to let me into the world of grown-­ups.

I spent my childhood in Bijelo Polje. In the summer, during the holiday, I spent my time at aunt Desa's in Sutivan and with my grandma Milka and grandpa Radonja Korac in the village Krlje near Berane. That red elephant with the wheels, the orange water polo ball and soft kisses on both cheeks I got from my father when I was three and recovering in hospital after my tonsils had been taken out. I fell madly in love when I was in the fifth grade, painted my first landscape in the seventh, and at sixteen had a fervent wish to learn to play the guitar. At twenty-­two I graduated from FFA in Cetinje and got drunk.



In primary and secondary school I passed grades first with the overall mark 'A' and later with 'B'.My father used to teach art and my mother finished School of Commerce and always went to PTA meetings alone. I didn’t come into this world unaccompanied. Throughout all nine blissful months in my mother’s womb my travelling companion was a blue­-eyed girl with the wheat coloured hair. Her name is Milica and she’s fifteen minutes older than me. Since that 8th July 1979, our brother Danilo hasn’t been alone or bored again.

I was incredibly lucky to be born in a beautiful country which, considering it from the present point of view, could have only existed in fairytales. Its name was the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Ten years after my birth it dissolved and I had to move my life to a new state called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It didn’t work either. Then I moved to the third one named Serbia and Montenegro. Now, finally, I live and work in the fourth called Montenegro. All my life, my hometown Bijelo Polje and I have been changing states but still have stayed in the same place, equally away from Belgrade, Berlin, Beijing... Cetinje is the town where I finished the Secondary Art School and later graduated from FFA in 2002 in professor Karailo’s class.

I painted, I travelled, I was rewarded, I kissed beautiful women, met new friends and no matter where I was I sent postcards home. Ludicrous wars and drunken soldiers finally died away. The time of exhausting, tiring politics and alienated people and life without one’s own word in it ensued all wrapped up in a word democracy. My brother moved to Norway where he moved on with his life. My sister went to Germany and I, our father and mother were left confused that cold winter only two days before a New Year’s Eve.  Nikola and Milos are my children’s names. Every summer my family gathers again.

Every day, with the first rays of sunlight, from a green yard full of flowers the voices of Kristina, Danilo, Danijela, Luka, Nikola and Milos can be heard. If you pass by my house feel free to stop and watch how we masterfully play football and see the true joy we feel in our hearts.

And trust me, after all their pleading, I have only recently admitted that I love painting because it is full of colours.

Lives and Works: Montenegro, ...