Nebojsa Zdravkovic was born
in Belgrade in 1959. From the age of 8 he attended a special school
for gifted children, where he learned to draw , paint, and make
small sculptures in terracotta and in ceramic. It was on his 10th
birthday on July 21st 1969, that the first men stepped onto the
surface of the moon. Three years later the Apollo 11 crew visited
Belgrade and Nebojsa's work was selected to be given as a present
to Neil Armstrong.
Armstrong and his "Thank you" letter, being a beautiful
reminder from that period. Another great influence in his life
was his grandmother, who was a talented artist in her own right,
even though she did not have an art education. Today Nebojsa still
possesses some of her small oils she painted as a young student,
and a beautiful copper lantern which he uses regularly as a prop
in his paintings. Whilst at school he used to sing in operas in
the Belgrade National Theater, and as a child he was proud to
sing the main role of the boy Sam in Benjamin Britten’s
opera “Little Sweep”. Music is still an important
and necessary passion in his life.
Nebojsa's education was competed at the Faculty of Fine Arts at
Belgrade University and he received his Masters Degree in 1986.
In 1991, he won a scholarship from the Spanish government to study
in Madrid. Later he spent alot of time in Greece where his paintings
became imbued with the colours of the Mediterranean. He held his
first solo exhibition in Athens in 1989, and one of his paintings
is in the collection of the City Art Gallery, Athens.
Since his childhood, Nebojsa has sought to understand the deepest
secrets of tiny differences between nuances of colour. His range
of work includes nudes, portraits and landscapes. He says he is
"walking slowy through expressionistic and impressionistic
ways of using colours.
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