Colić

The nude female body has always been a great challenge to artists. Starting from the Venus of Willendorf, along with the Venus de Milo, to the depiction of nude Eve in the Garden of Eden, to Botticelli’s Venus and Manet’s Olympia and the nude women painted by Lucian Freud, the artists have expressed their view of the nude female body. Uglješa often does not present the entire nude, just one part, a selected part, the part that he chooses and dedicates himself to. He does not stop playing, and like Parmigianino, he deliberately extends certain parts of the body, adding more ribs than actually are, deviating from the rules and creating a distinctive woman...

Ljiljana Maksimović,  BA in Art History
From the catalog: "The Bermuda Triangle of the Flesh", Cultural Center of Novi Sad, Youth Forum, 2015.

The young painter Uglješa Colić has moulded various aspects of the issue of the female body into a personal, unique, yet comprehensive system. In order to define all the complexity of the theme, the artist has chosen to present a series of female nudes, which have been elevated to a metaphysical level through complex visual clarification.

Jasna Jovanov,  Phd in Art History
From the catalog: "Body and Space - metaphysical sense of the nude", Eđšeg Castle Novi Sad, 2016.

The prints of Uglješa Colic emit unrest and an explosion of colours. The artist abstracts all the irrelevant details and focuses only on the main characteristics of the face portrayed - eyes, nose and mouth. As a worthy successor to German Expressionists from the Dresden group "Die Brücke", this author builds the psychological state of his characters with short, busy lines, contrasts and intense colours.

Dragana Garić,  BA in Art History
From the catalog: Exhibition of Portraits, "Look Me In the Eyes", Gallery of the National Library "Veljko Petrović", Bačka Palanka, 2011.

Uglješa Colić was able to see what the land has confidently whispered to him about its silences and unrest. To repeat the testimony and to express the thought. Out of a small number of artists, I do not know a more exciting painter of the plain of the Serbian north, who, as Heraclitus of Ephesus, unites the earth and the sun as if they are within one’s grasp.

Miroslav Radonjić,  M.A., theatrologist
From the catalog: Landscape exhibition "Silence and unrest", Art Gallery of the Cultural Center in Kula, 2014.

Uglješa Colić, in the exaltation of his inner quest, builds his work sturdily, as a palimpsest, coming out of the known and accepted, and stepping into Homo Ludens. In this endless game, through his portraits or faces, as if he conveys that life does not start with us and it does not end with us. We are somewhere in the middle of things, in a place where we can find ourselves.

Kirćanski Duško,  academic printmaker
From the catalog: "Printmaking exhibition 300+ ", Gallery of the National Museum of Zrenjanin, Zrenjanin, 2011.

A crucial observation, one should not fail to notice, is that Uglješa Colić strongly emphasizes the meaning of beauty precisely by not thematising the image of the painted person, by not revealing any character. It seems to me that, unusually courageously, spiritually and artistically challenging, he explores the nude as an issue of the meaning of beauty of the body in essence, hence a philosophical issue. Therefore, I see Uglješa Colić’s nude as a deeper, simultaneously philosophical and artistic revision of European tradition in understanding the nude, because it raises the issue not only of individual beauty, but also of the substantial, metaphysical, timeless.

Mišo Kulić,  Doctor of Philosophy
From the catalog: "Metaphysical sense of the nude", Gallery of the Culture Center Stara Pazova, 2016.

If anyone, in the generation of creators who appeared on our art scene, Uglješa Colić has placed the metaphysical image of a woman at a considerable distance. Not too close, not too far away, these female bodies have imaginative forms of metamorphosis as such ... Uglješa Colić seductively displays the fact that each man has his own Borodino. A battle whose destiny he shapes. This Uglješa arrived at the right moment: the renewal of the romantic spirit has just begun.

Draško Ređep,  Doctor of Literature
From the catalog: "The non-existent magical fur", Gallery Prometej, Novi Sad, 2013