One meeting: Oto Bihalji-Merin and Goja

In cooperation between the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Naive and Marginal Art, an exhibition was recently held in the Gallery-legacy of Milica Zorić and Rodoljub Čolaković Otto Bihalji-Merin: I had to be present.. As part of that exhibition, which is very narrative and meaningful, various documents and objects related to her central personality were shown. Curators Senka Latinović and Miroslav Karić created a portrait of Oto Bihalji-Merin in a certain way and presented his biography, intertwined with the lives of other important European authors and to some extent positioned in relation to them.

photo: mnmu

My attention was particularly drawn to the exhibited books about Francisco Goya. I have to admit I didn't know about them. Those books do not exist in our language and that fact surprised me. These are three books written in German and published between 1980 and 1985 by the publisher Belzer from Stuttgart and Zurich. They are complemented by photographs of all Goya's works, as well as their details, by Max Seidel. The first of those three "volumes" is dedicated to a series of satirical graphics Caprices, the second tries to synthetically encompass Goya's oeuvre and then focuses primarily on his works produced until the end of the 18th century, while the third deals with portraits of rulers and works about wartime events. The horrors of war two centuries separate from today's wars in Ukraine and Gaza. However, that series of graphics also portrays them naked with its immediacy and universality.

What languages ​​do the books in question speak? The first two were translated into English and Spanish and published in New York and Madrid. The third remained in German. Given that they contain many high-quality reproductions, it can be said that they convey the universal "language" of painting, drawing and graphics, accessible to any person with a functioning sense of sight. One of those books, the one that contains a synthetic introduction to the artist's work and its interpretation, was also translated into Italian. In that monograph we read: "Goya painted life and truth". The original title of that book is Goya and us, and in its translations it was changed, mostly to Goya then and now. It is not a radical change, since all versions of the title preserve its essence.

Before the publication of those books, Bihalji-Merin had already written about Goya. He dedicated an article to him published in the magazine "Naša književnost" in 1946. He could see the works of that artist live in Madrid since 1932, when he visited Spain immediately after the establishment of what turned out to be a short-lived republic in that country.

In the apartment where Oto Bihalji-Merin lived, near Sava Square, at the beginning of Nemanjina Street, which was converted into the Salon that bears his name, I had the pleasure of talking with the curators of the mentioned exhibition over coffee. During that visit, Senka Latinović, curator of the Salon, told me that the books about Goja had been translated into Serbian and were awaiting publication. That information made me happy. In the orderly inventory of Bihalji-Merin's personal library, I noticed that there are about 35 books, both monographs and catalogs, about Goya. I think it's the most represented artist on his shelves.

A special issue is the fourth volume. There was a plan to publish it as well, but so far it has not seen the light of day. Its title is unknown, at least to me. Perhaps it also contains some Bihalji-Merin autobiographical references. Conceptually speaking, it is not a trilogy, but a tetralogy. It is not known where that manuscript is, whether it was finished or not, or whether it exists at all. In the three published books, there is a noticeable absence of dealing with the graphic cycle Follies, and he, along with some other works from Goya's late period, such as Black pictures - in its hermeticity also quite resistant to interpretations - should have been the subject of that unpublished volume. What is the chance that this manuscript will be found and published posthumously? It's hard to say.

A few years after the publication of the aforementioned article on Goya, the text "Love for beautiful books" appeared in "Književni novine". In that article, Bihalji-Merin called old acquaintances those books that he had lost over time, and then had an encounter with some of their copies. Maybe one of them is dedicated to Goya. Then he adds: "The books that I need in my work, which I always take off the shelves again and again, should not wear a protective cover. Let them wear out like I wear out in time and in the task. Some of them leave me again, just like friends who have gone a different way leave you; others are faithful, they stay." Among them are those that we find in his personal library.

Seeing books as if they were human beings or persons – acquaintances or friends – is a phenomenon I think about. Bihalji-Merin and Seidel's books on Goya are undoubtedly beautiful. By meeting them, I met new friends, more precisely, female friends. I continue to socialize with them, to get to know them better, in the hope that they will soon be published in our language.