UNMIK ON AIR

Artist from Brezovica

By Blagoje GRUJIC and Zoran CULAFIC

Brezovica mountain is well known as a winter ski center, but many people prefer visiting this beautiful area also during spring and summer time. UNMIK ON AIR visited a talented artist, Zoran Popovic Zanko, who is living on Brezovica Mountain and more then decade doing his painters artwork and wood sculpture, as well as poetry.

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Mountain slops of Brezovica surrounds the multiethnic town of Strpce, Zanko’s birthplace, this is where he chooses to do his his artwork inspired by the beautiful nature that spreads all around.

Zoran Popovic Zanko is just one of the artists living in the area.

Zoran Popovic Zanko: My work is tied with this nature here. I do not use a wood that one could buy at warehouse or similar places. Simply I go out to forest and find a piece of wood or a small branch that eventually comes out on my paintings. I’m closely tied with this mountain. There is something inside your stomach ... cannot explain it ... but one cannot create a painting if he does not feel and love the nature. I think I like here people and forest and woodpecker and fox and air ... I like everything.

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Zanko told UNMIK ON AIR that he started doing his artwork at an early age, while at primary school. While at high school he won several awards, while he was progressing to become eventually a well-known artist

Zanko left his Brezovica Mountain to study in the town of Nis in southern Serbia, but his love for nature and art was stronger, as he describes it, and he decided to return to his small town in Kosovo.

For more then a decade Zanko has also collected hundreds of his artworks, and become famous in artistic circles in the Balkans, but interestingly, so far he has not organized a single exhibition of his paintings, nor he published a single poetry book. Moreover, Zanko refused to profit on his artwork.

Zoran Popovic Zanko - I’m trying to be a good Christian and never I had a single thought to become rich selling my icons ... although there were many opportunities for that. People used to come from different places and ask me to paint icons inside their church, offering me in that times as much as 80.000 DM. I can only say that when you work you invest a positive energy into your artwork, and eventually the icon is giving me back that energy. So, it would be the worst thing to paint an icon, when you go deep into it, and to think in the same time – oh, I’m going to get a lot of money selling it. So, you are not selling the icon, you are selling yourself.

Almost in every office in Strpce, as well as in local restaurants, you can see Zanko’s artworks. Many people buy. The price of Zanko’s artwork is very low, just to cover the expenses, and not to become a rich, as he say. With his wife and four children he is living in an old ruined family house, and although he has a strong belief that money does not make the world, Zanko he is sometimes concerned about the future of his children.

Zoran Popovic Zanko: I have nothing so I cannot go to Serbia ... but, often I think about ... what kind a father am I when I’m not capable to provide better conditions for my kids.

Without university education in art, and with no exhibitions to praise his artwork, it is hard to believe that Zanko is going to enter the elite artistic club. However his artwork is highly praised in his Brezovica Mountain area, and he has become a trademark for his town.

That’s all for today, tomorrow, our feature will be on Thanks for listening to the studio of UNMIK on Air.

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