INSPIRATIVE CHARACTERS
Text from the exhibit catalogue

Author: Stjepan Fileki

Olivera Stojadinović, a mid generation artist, is known to our artistic public by her fruitful work in graphic design. This has been confirmed by the rewards she received both in the country and abroad. Her art achievements and her creativity show that in the area of calligraphy and typography there is a personality who will extend considerable influence on restoration and further successful development of these branches of the applied art.

Our artists engaged in doing types, even those most famous ones, neglected typography, either consciously or not, on the account of calligraphy and vice versa. This resulted from the lack of understanding the importance of mutual relations between the two fields of work. Olivera Stojadinović is among the first to achieve fine results both in calligraphy and typography. She is successful in her pedagogical work as well as in the artistic one. She developed her own way of work making her fruitful artist and good lecturer.

Olivera Stojadinović succeeded in finding authentic expression within numerous limitations existing in the process of writing and drawing letters. In time her handwriting became more and more free and spontaneous. This “psychomotor improvisation” as once called by Paul Clee, developed from hand movements and gestures as direct art trace. Strict structures of typographic and calligraphic shapes are the basis on which the movement runs free resulting in a kind of choreographic expression. Her whole proceeding can be described as writing from inside, a kind of meditative calligraphy. They are direct poetic-artistic reflexes.

The feature distinguishing her from the artists whose work is also guided by inner impulse is her capability to put under strict control psychomotor improvisation, a control defined by the types' shapes and above all guidelines governing typefaces design.

Prosperous combination of intuitive and rational capabilities is most concise description of her artistic potential.