Art critics

Husein Bašić

… In contrast to the bare Montenigrin landscape, the blossomed stone teat and the wild verve, life on the brink of sun, sea and rocks, in the eternal struggle for life (on the canvases of the most famous Montenigrinpainters), on Hadžić’s works we encounter the green miracle of world, hidden beneath various green shades of earth and sky, mountains and water, in green half-dream and half-reality, in green fairytale which cannot be contracted nor be told… (1982)

Ibrahim Hadžić

… The second more capacious cycle, which Ismet has been working on for several years now, and which is already the result of artistic maturity, could be called by the line of the famous Spanish poet Lorca “Green, I love you green”. What is actually green in these pictures? Since Ismet lives and works in the region which is, by its colorfulness and greenery, one of the most beautiful parts of Montenegro, and being on a robust wave of greenery, the painter has nothing left, but to try creating the green paintings based on the gradation of the valers and the value of radiation, and to become a potent painter of landscapes … (1982)

Ljiljana Hristova

… As distinctive elements of his (Ismet Hadžić’s) creativity, the following emerge: the depth of the fragmentary landscape, a distinctive aspect of setting up a compositional solution, related, smart synchronization of green, blue and yellow chromaticity, the introduction of certain chromatic accents that enhance the dynamics of impressions … (1989)

Ismet Rebronja

… Ismet Hadžić (as many of his colleagues by brush and pen) creates, while others acquire material wealth. That the artist is right is a fact that Ovid had known and who addressed us from Ponto that nothing was more useful than those skills that did not give any benefit. Ismet Hadžić creates a painting, and a song. And that’s his and our true wealth. It has been said long time ago that the image is a voiceless song. The painter Ismet Hadzic confirms that… (2001)

Džengis Redžepagić

… Denying the real, Hadžić gives his sensibility unlimited trust. The play of pouring the real into the abstract, and vice versa (rarely), objects receive, or deliberately lose, their form and meaning, depending on how much Hadžić wants to emphasize the imagination and the dramatics of space. With his visual poetics Hadžić moves the boundaries of the ordinary and accustomed order of things in a double game of memorizing and predicting the new situations, where every move has its own mental coverage … (2008)

Draginja Kujović

… Ismet Hadžić succeeded to accomplish the work that makes a chapter for itself in painting. The essence of his work is related to art, to the authenticity of his homeland, to the visual and sensual experience of the composition. He made a handwriting of clear stylistic character. Ismet Hadžić‘s easy-to-follow painting process makes him an unusual, recognizable and special artistic phenomenon in the field of contemporary Montenegrin painting … (2009)

Salko Luboder

… Using a drawing as a dominant form of expression in graphic art, with the creative skill and artistic enchantment, Ismet Hadžić succeeds to reach what we pursue for in art. In his works, we can discern the speech of the mountain with our eyes, we disentangle the difficult mystical feature of nature in a spiritual enthusiasm, and we register the moonlight that can be seen and which only started to drizzle over the top of the mountain of his alchemical artistic skill. When an observer is led to that point of an artistic exposure, then he is separated from the state of ecstatic excitement only for a step. In fact, he has already found himself there, in the concentric circles of exaltation. There are as many concentric circles as there are his works before your eyes. As in his entire art work, and when it comes to graphics, Ismet Hadžić remains passionately tied to Hajla, his mountain. And, of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. On the contrary. In that way he only shows that he strives and belongs to the heights, creative and aesthetic. And not only that. In that specific place, a space for metaphysical reflections that are released from the mountains are being freed from the breasts of the mountain. Again, moving towards the concentric circles of the artistic impression of Hadžić’s graphics, almost everywhere, we notice that from the seemingly ordinary motifs, he managed to make a complex visual reflection. Such are, for example, the works of “Migrations”, “Loneliness”, “Fatherland”, “Wolf and Sheep” … And something that should not be left unnoticed. In an almost unique way, on one of his graphics, he preserves from oblivion one of the features of this past patriarchal life. The son does not dare to speak to his father directly. That is why he writes the message on the tree bark. That is the way a graphic called “Marry me father, I found a girl” appeared … (2010)

Pavle Goranović

… Almost the whole Ismet Hadžić’s opus is made of the artistic writings from the shadow. With the new exhibition he shows that these are writings about the shadow. This silent and consistent author creates out of the noise of the time he lives in. Humble and patient, he slowly builds the artistic world of loneliness, which is our common and irrevocable legacy. Wherever we are – in a variable whirlpool of everyday life or in the constant weaving of our lonely world. This testimony probably should not be complemented, since it explains the essence of Hadžić‘s art in the best way: subtle tones, sophisticated records of colours, a nostalgic approach to the world. In the ostensibly peaceful Hadžić’s landscapes, however, we recognize the areas of great uncertainties of the thinking creature. Here, people and events move slowly like shadows, like time and hours. Ismet Hadžić is a thorough creator devoted to the native motive, as a place from where everything comes from and where everything returns to. If art is a credible shadow of life, then Hadžić has succeeded in his artistic vision. And it is up to us to notice what kind of shadows and traces leave the shadows themselves, the very essence of Hadžić‘s art … (2012)

Enes Halilović

… The landscapes of Ismet Hadžić are views or pictures of the unique parts of a huge mosaic of nature, but played in special charms. On the basis of the simplicity and silence to which the artist escaped, the restlessness and rudeness that he escaped from can be reconstructed. The mood in which Hadžić‘s oils on canvas emerge in harmony with nature as a subject of observation and interpretation. It is as if these images are the indicators of a man‘s view of the primeval silence and natural harmony. The artist‘s need to look at a metaphysical point, found in nature, shows the sinking of time and the man, and the original sound of the picture demoskira durable reality of the city, a pink media image and an artificer famed for everyday trivia. Hence we can say that the painted scenes did not find the painter, but the painter found them. He did not paint them himself, but wants to show them – to offer asylum, comfort, address for escape with other eyes … (2014)

Sonja Milićević

… Thus, Hadžić, in his recent opus called Cocktail (paintings/graphic prints), drives us into a subtle game, which the motif itself does not express, nor represent. Hadžić‘s concept of painting, which is provisionally realistic, because he did not separate himself from the material world in the treatment of motifs, is more complex in terms of content. That is why, on the paintings, besides the basic one, there is a parallel motif which quite certainly overtakes the main role and is the bearer of the iconographic layer. Shadow of a man. With the light and the shadow, as essential elements of visual composition, Hadžić masterfully tranfers data about space and time on his graphic prints, and he introduces the „human shadow“, not as an element of composing, but as a motif, into the world of his painted landscapes deprived of human figures, but not of his presence … (2015)

Ilja Slani

… When speaking about the relatively new Hadžić’s activity in the field of graphic techniques, which is developed in parallel with his painting, it was in some way unexpected that a virtual colourist devotes himself to the game of measure and modulation, calmness of saturation and flickering of translucency, magic of light and shadow, black paint and white paper. There is nothing left but to call help from Gaston Bachelard, the author of The Poetics of Space, who loved and advocated graphics: “Look at one of those engravings, and it will start to talk to you itself!” … (2017)

Danijela Purešević

… Hajla received its most famous and sublime ode to date on Hadzic‘s paintings. He sees Hajla with the gaze of a calm, patient and devoted man. The reconciled man. This huge mountain, with its 2403 m, is powerful, harsh, sharp, and unpredictable. Wat- ching it his whole life from the window of the house where he was born, in all of its phases shrouded in ice and snow, awakening in the springtime awakening, its slopes engulfed by fire, in the dead of night, in the rain and storm – Ismet always sees his mountain shaded by beauty, softness and warmth. He looks at it with understanding, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Ultimately – with faith. In reality, in illusion, in shadow – his image of nature is never turbulent, harsh and sharp, but soft, calm and fluid. In painter‘s dialogue with Hajla, that is, with nature, otherworldly and divine, there is no conflict or tension on the line of I-It. Nature / Hajla is not the „otherness“. The painter and the scene are fused in coexistence with the invisible world. With the suggestion that a man is only united with nature, he can survive in it. This can also be understood as a kind of Zen. Hadžić paints this relationship with a fine, refined, painterly stain, and with a delicate, sensual veining of the drawing.
A valuable segment of Hadzic‘s oeuvre is the prints, mostly made in intaglio printing, which is a rare practice today not only in Montenegro but beyond. These meticulously rendered prints are motivationally close to his painting work: there is an immediate environment and a view always focused on Hajla. However, the delicate black and white range of etching, combined with unique shading, allowed Hadzic to step out brilliantly towards reaching the invisible in the medium of the visible (paintings/prints). Extraordinary sheets of Four Views of Hajla reveal this mountain under the cover of night, under the light of a new but also the full moon. Unveiling the darkness, they discover the world of the sleeping mountain… (2019)

Predrag Čudić

… Ismet Hadžić is a painter of his land, an art witness to what he observes and what he experiences, but he is also an annotator of some ongoing processes around us. His landscapes, enrailed with barbed wire, no matter how visually attractive they seem, are a sad testimony of the dispersion of our patriotism over the scenery of split boundaries and jurisdictions … (1982)

Mladen Lompar

… Ismet Hadžić had initially tied himself to the themes of artistic processing of native legends, giving them a subtle surreal tone. Later, he has focused himself on painting landscapes and animals, in a veristic expression, in sensible colours and a drizzling structure. He applies the colour in miniscule, restless strokes, emphasizing the dramatic nature of the scene itself. With these pastoral situations, in a kind of nostalgic way, he points to the modern, dehumanizing age … (1986)

Ibrahim Hadžić

… The landscapes of Ismet Hadžić and the images of animals are not pastoral paintings. They are not an embellished and romantic reality, but rather a personal map of homeland with often ominous, as an indication given, barbed wire. Ismet‘s paintings, mainly monumental, act as excerpts from the homeland scenery. These materialized depictions of mountains, meadows, hay, sheep and goats, are consistently held on a thin canvas, enclosed by fragile frames. Pounds of green paint are harmoniously highlighted with gray and blue. Evident compositional structure, painted with brief and light gestures, Ismet‘s paintings radiate with pictorial vigor, strongly entwining themselves in the contemporary streams of Montenegrin painting … (2000)

Jasmina Tutorov

… Ismet Hadžić paints idyllic landscapes where an unusual realistic detail makes the composition suddenly slips into the surreal. He paints landscapes using wide surfaces of the flare bright colours, colours of the sunny day … (2003)

Jasmina Tutorov

… The author is in deep collusion with nature, but also in the collaboration with the real visual values. For us, the spectators, Hadžić has performed the pleasure of relieving urban loads for a moment, and through the beauty of these paintings from the nature, through the imagined views of nature, we feel the harmonious unity of man and nature. The forms on Hadžić‘s paintings are extremely simplified, actually drawn with a thin, coloured line-contour on a light background. The works contain beauty and charm. With these graphics, Hadžić confirmed that the native landscapes and elements are permanently settled in him … (2008)

Jasmina Tutorov

… In his works, Hadžić is superiorly playing with the real and irrational. He composes the idyllic landscape of the environment with the unusual details from the same milieu, and this detail makes seams of reality possible to rupture and to fulfil the image with a spiritual symbolism … (2009)

Anastazija Miranović

… It seems that Ismet Hadžić “has found a human clue which is a nature itself at the same time “. His work of art puts us in the inevitable/indisputable context of shaping, the metamorphosis of emergent from the creation of the artistic, through a symbol, a sign that frees us from the deceit of the ephemeral life senses. Portraits of nature/people are the ancient picture of the world that defines us in the eternal cohabitation through a permanent continuance. What equally stimulates the analysis and possible interpretations, when observing the works of Ismet Hadžić, are undoubtedly the symbolic plane and the artistic-language values of his painting. Landscape, mountain Hajla, nature in general, by artistic upgrade become symbols of archetypal, but also a warning, a testimony, an artistic appeal and a cry for salvation, preservation, care and desire to return to oneself, to the natural in man, which has been wasted in the race with time. Mountain Hajla is a personification, a metaphor, a leitmotif, a symbol – it is Ismet’s “genius loci”. It is the mountain of his childhood. Hajla is the mother who feeds/gives birth/works. Hadžić coquets with Hajla in the most subtle way, the game of seduction, as with the beautiful lover with the melodic name. Hajla is tilled, inflamed, cold, frozen, and bathed in light. Hajla speaks with the loudest mute language in the dawns, in the twilights, in the sparkling mornings of snow fogs. Hajla’s phases have been replaced by the finest coloured weaving, the smooth valerian passes and the general places where man meets nature, the meetings of the artist with himself. The brave solutions of composition are achieved by the arrangement of plans and by the diagonal setting of the pieces which create the specific dynamics of the scene. With the visual vocabulary Hadžić establishes a special atmosphere at the brink of the metaphysical. The artist creates in accordance with the thesis that “… colour is a vibration as much as the music, capable to reach the most general and most indeterminate that exists in nature – its inner strength” … (2011)

Sreten Vujović

… The latest presentation of Ismet Hadžić‘s exhibitions under the title „Man from the Shadow“ is a poetic visual story in which an observer is found through a multiple associative connections, but the shadows themselves represent observers, located within diverse scenery, and not fixed for a certain timeframe, but have a duration that actually is a reflection of existence. A man from the shadow, in the context like this one, is perceived more as a possible reality, or one that already has his silent and invisible life, and we only attend it when the artist in his own way saves it from silence and places it in the landscape to which it belonged to, invisible to the everyday observer … (2012)

Ljiljana Zeković

… With his artistic opus, Ismet Hadžić, a painter and a graphic artist, belongs to the circle of the artists of the private proceeding, the artist who appeared on the Montenegrin art scene four decades ago. The nature from which he commenced in shaping of his works of art is not just an object of research for the secrets of its phenomenological relations and laws, but a space where he reveals a new painting reality. In fact, Hadžić adapts the seen things to the intellectual conception of the image, experiencing reality as an autonomous vision in which he attains the psychophysical and spiritual unity of nature and man. The man and nature in his paintings have become immanent attributes that earlier had the narrative input, in order to give them a metaphysical note later. Hadžić‘s visions represent the world of spirituality and light, and when there is light, there is a shadow as well. Thus, in the dream, the corpus humanum is replaced with the umbra homo/man‘s shadow – a symbol of unreal and changeable things, which, as an incongruity, connects the being with his soul on the border between real and imaginary, real and illusory … (2015)

Ana Sindik

… From Marcel Duchamp and his version of Mona Lisa, all the way to Ismet‘s transfiguration of this topic, on which obviously one broadcast takes place that accurately detects it. Namely, in this graphic version we also get the author of Mona Lisa, the artist whose portrait is on the screen box, through which the model appears in its trans-emitting and planetary reproduction, of which we cannot see the end. In the age that is infallibly interpreted as virtual and real-integrally, such an approach deserves deeper and more analytical processing: the grand Leonard theme, here, on Ismet‘s graphic print, once again has lived to see its step forward, where the technological elaboration of beings leads the main word; not only art is endangered (which is increasingly becoming a media thing), the very spirit of mankind is attacked! Therefore, a coin like the New Renaissance tells us much more than it can be read or translated today! Namely, the New Renaissance is precisely that crude compression and suppression of history in just one (as) universal theme, the one that is easy to handle and reproduce technologically. Therefore, I am truly more than grateful to Ismet Hadžić, who has allowed me to say a bit about his works, which remain one of the central graphic places in the Montenegrin art scene, which still needs to be answered with a deep analytic and its approach. From that answer, the morning of our graphic media will depend on the day … (2017)

Sonja Milićević

… What is the secret of that consistent determina- tion? In the life of every human being (as well as in the history of one nation) there is convergence and integration of time and place, whose meaning substantially determines its essence and character. Far from the utterance that Ismet Hadžić is a „ge- netically predetermined conservative” who, after having developed his talent and knowledge at the Academy of Fine Arts in Pristina and then improved his skills in Moscow, went back to his homeland because he could not find his destination outside his border. On the contrary, it is a mythical form: Hadžić, like Antaeus, was connected to the ground where he first lowered his feet on and made his first steps. 2 He is deeply rooted in that ground, he did not have to „adapt to the environment and invoke images in a glass of chlorinated water” 3 – he is on his own. That is where the strength of his determi- nation is in direct relation with the homeland, man is only a link, spiritus agens, never visually shaped content. The contents are valleys, and ravines, meadows, and sheep, cornfields, and mountain peaks, and shepherds‘ huts, basins and pine trees, carpets and scarves… This „physical structure” of the native land, where in the lyrical silence passed mo- ments are met and future moments are announced, Hadžić transposes images into the imaginary world by bringing a bit of surreal and/or metaphysical intonation. Nature becomes a „new painting real- ity” 4 closer to the mind than to the sight, and ge- nius loci (the particularity of a place) is elevated to the universal meaning of identity and space. In that way Hadžić‘s intimate mythology, intertwined with the attempts to decipher the nature as an existen- tial habitat 5 , was transformed into a form of poetic thinking, where permanent and transitory traces of the modern man are reflected and made his little homeland into the centre of his art world… (2019)

Vuk Vuković

… In the very peculiar, I would say secluded way, most closely related to the very personal Homeland, in many ways Hadžić records his natural phases in his graphics; the artist in it speaks against the general natural transience, umbilically attached to what ma- kes him react in his own way, with the trace which imprinted in art, remains to last as an essential of the time by keeping it from the shadows and ghosts of transience.The Graphic of Montenegro, in Ismet Hadžić, has, nowadays, the best, and we talk about the high quality artist who to contemporary, nonbeing time, opposes the works which are of the first class in their themes and techniques, which respond to all the demands of Graphic as a medium which is, obviously, on its descending spot – it is certainly in the twilight, and in the tardy era – in the era of technoemancipation with is dictated by design, computer superrealrender, installation and 3D simulation modelling concept of things and the environment, settlements and cities, Graphic is pushed to the ultimate line, so the appearance of the artists as Ismet Hadžić undoubtedly speaks of an irreducible difference based on consistency and originality, so that he is not only one of the first in his generation, but he is an example to us – younger graphic artists who could refer to his works, and observing them learn how art is being protected, how a man is celebrated, how the techno mania of the modern world is being overwhelmed, and how, indeed, art will save the world, and artists like Ismet Hadžić save a media like Graphic… (2019)