Borivoje Stevanović | Origin of Street Names

Borivoje Stevanović (1879 - 1976) was a renowned Serbian painter and impressionist, the first academic painter of southern Serbia, one of the founders of the "Belgrade School" of painting, a long-time drawing professor, and ultimately a regular member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

He was born in Niš, into a bourgeois family shortly after the liberation of the city from the Ottomans and its annexation to the then Principality of Serbia. Due to his father's job, the family moved to Pirot for a while before settling in Belgrade, where Borivoje would receive his education, spend his career, and the majority of his life.

In Belgrade, his talent for drawing and painting began to develop more intensively at the first Belgrade School of Painting. After completing this school, without forgetting his hometown, he decided to hold his first solo exhibition, which was also the first art exhibition ever, in Niš. As Niš was an artistically underdeveloped environment at the time, the exhibition was organized in a tavern.

Like many painters of the late 19th century, his path to advanced art education led him to Munich, where he attended the famous art academy as a state scholarship holder.

Upon his return to the country, he became a member of Lada, the first and oldest art association in Serbia, whose founders and members included great artists such as Uroš Predić, Nadežda Petrović, Rista Vukanović, Milena Pavlović Barili, and others. He was also one of the founders of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (ULUS).

Over the years, working as a drawing teacher in schools in Skopje and Belgrade, Borivoje Stevanović developed his own artistic style, essentially impressionistic but with a distinctive personal touch. His works predominantly feature natural motifs, landscapes, and their pronounced lighting.

Depicting the peripheral parts of Belgrade (Karaburma, Čubura, Dušanovac, etc.) became a trademark of this painter, as well as a kind of visual chronicle of a city that did not look like it does today. Girl with a Book, Old Shrub from the Danube, Savinačka Church, Marinkova Bara, Čuburski Potok, and Self-Portrait are among Borivoje Stevanović's most important works.

At the beginning of World War I, he was assigned to military postal duties and spent some time in captivity. After the war, he continued his educational work in Belgrade until his retirement.

He spent World War II in complete isolation from social activities, focusing on painting and living a solitary life. Such a way of life would accompany him in his old age as well.

Living under five different political systems in the same country (Principality of Serbia, Kingdom of Serbia, Kingdom of SHS, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, and SFR Yugoslavia), Borivoje Stevanović reached old age and passed away in Belgrade at the age of 97.

Symbolically, his name is now given to a street in his hometown of Niš, as well as in the Belgrade neighborhood of Medaković 3, whose landscapes he often depicted during his lifetime.