Sava Stepanov, Art Critic, Novi Sad, Serbia
Gallery of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (ULUS), February 11–24, 1998
Belgrade, Yugoslavia

Published in 1998

The painter Vlastimir Madić belongs to those many lovers of landscape — and of the Deliblat Sands in particular — who have known how to give visual form to their experiences and enthusiasms, and who have built their own painterly stance and expression. Madić confirmed his commitment to landscape throughout the entirety of his creative development, so that it can be said the maturation of the landscape-painting proceeded alongside the maturation of his artistic personality. Indeed, in the case of Vlastimir Madić, we observe a fate shared by many painters in Vojvodina — shaped as much by the landscapes of the Vojvodinian plains as by the inner logic of the pictorial organism. In his early works, Madić strove to bring the painted motif into correspondence with the appearance of the actual landscape. However, through a gradual decomposition of the plastic whole into its essential visual elements — color, line, compositional rhythm — each of which increasingly gained independence, Madić moved ever deeper into the territory of the painting itself as a distinct medium, as a space of expressive authenticity.

Childhood dreams painted with landscape: "Stara planina"

Interpretative consistency began to loosen in his panoramic motifs, in those broad, plan‑like scenes where lines spread before the viewer like a tangle of fragmented ground‑forms. In these works, the line assumes primary power and importance. It serves not only to describe the motif but also to convey expressiveness; it dictates the intensity of the painting's overall rhythm. In harmony with the unruly color, the line — dynamic and robust — acts as a true seismograph of the artist's inner tremors and excitements, as well as those of the viewer. The coloristic tone is distinctive, balanced between "original" and "pure" color values and their more muted variations. Such painting possesses an authentic appearance, yet it also reveals a somewhat restrained painterly temperament. Madić insisted on the unity of all pictorial elements, seeking a coherent visual whole, and in doing so he accepted certain necessary sacrifices. However, in the works currently emerging from his studio and presented in this exhibition, significant artistic changes are taking place. Madić breaks even more decisively with the mimetic connection to the motif and steps into the realm of abstraction. This is not a sudden or spectacular shift, but rather a harmonious transposition resulting from continuous work and logical evolution in his understanding of the pictorial organism. The most notable changes occur in the domain of color. The composition is freed from the reinforcing power of the line, which is now translated into color itself. The painter allows the paint to drip across the canvas in thin traces. This dripping is strictly controlled, at times even suggesting a geometric structure. Yet within this new framework, Madić introduces numerous accents — color‑rich surfaces that carry expressive weight and reveal elements of a new understanding of the image, as well as a distinctive artistic poetics attuned to the sensibilities and aesthetic needs of the contemporary viewer.

Dušan Đokić, Art critic, Belgrade, Serbia
Stara Kapetanija Art Gallery, February 6–18, 1990
Belgrade, Serbia

Published in 1990

In the series of paintings that occupied Vlastimir Madić's focused study over the past decade, certain characteristics emerged that clearly signaled a process of maturation and the rounding‑out of earlier experiences. He discovered a space of artistic action in which a distinct typological structure comes to the forefront — along with a symbolic, individual "genre line" guided by measured expression and a concentration on seemingly simple motif coordinates. A landscape or terrain viewed from a distance, with a raised horizon, appears less as a literal scene and more as a "field of action." In this sense, the work moves closer to the concept of the painting as an autonomous, almost abstract frame. This is emphasized through the chosen chromatic range — light and dark ochres, umber, dove‑blue tones — and the free, nervous network of dark strokes forming a conglomerate structure reminiscent of dried roots or land threatened by drought.

Exotic Landscape, oil on canvas, 1987

This simultaneously warm and austere, complex consonance became the defining characteristic of these works. Despite the restrained figurative foundation, they preserve the full force of felt form — forms that, in their distant associative simplicity, carry something almost primordial, erotic, tonal, permeated by the forces of nature and by a sense of deep unity among all things. Some of these paintings were created outdoors, on the picturesque fields and rolling terrain of Deliblatska Peščara — the new South Banat Barbizon. Yet nothing in them suggests the naïveté of weekend painting. Instead, within their muted drama, a far more complex and serious dialogue unfolds with contemporary painting — somewhere between the differences and affinities of the older generations of "landscape artists" from the first art colonies and those who followed. As a true "knight of the brush," Madić leaves on these canvases the unmistakable traces of the painter's battlefield.