Sava Sekulić

1902-1989 · Bilišani, Croatia

Orphaned of his father at ten, unschooled, and half-blinded in the First World War, Sava Sekulić taught himself to read and write, then painted a mythology entirely his own.

The life

Sekulić was born in 1902 in Bilišani, in the Dalmatian hinterland, into deep poverty. His father died when he was ten, he never attended school, and a wartime injury at fifteen cost him an eye. After years of itinerant labour across the Balkans he settled in Belgrade, taught himself to read and write, and began painting in 1932 alongside a lifelong practice of poetry, fitting both around construction work and other jobs until he retired in 1962 and gave himself to art full time. He signed his works CCC, the Cyrillic form of SSS, for Sava Sekulić Samuk. He died in Belgrade in 1989.

The work

Mixed media on paper and cardboard: single figures fusing human and animal bodies, victims and rebels out of the folk legends of his childhood, painted in a restricted palette of transparent, near-monochrome washes, with verses often inscribed on the backs. His work is held by the Museum of Naïve and Marginal Art in Jagodina, the Croatian Museum of Naïve Art in Zagreb and the Zander Collection in Germany.

Why we love them

One eye, no schooling, and an imagination that fused man, beast and legend into a single body. Self-made in the fullest sense there is.

Go deeper

• Sava Sekulić at the Outsider Art Fair
• Sava Sekulić on Wikipedia
• Where to see outsider art, our full list of museums and collections.
• The glossary, if any of the terms here are new.

Kindred spirits

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