Safet Zec's Retrospective at Lille's Sainte Marie-Madeleine Church

The exhibition of Safet Zec at the Église Sainte Marie-Madeleine in Lille, France, from September 15 to November 18, 2001, showcases the artist's evolution from meticulous landscapes to expressionist works reflecting war and exile. Curated by Arnauld Brejon de Lavergnée, director of the Palais des beaux-arts de Lille, the show is held in a recently restored 18th-century church. Zec, born in 1943 in Rogatica (now Bosnia-Herzegovina), has focused on motifs like trees, houses, windows, and body fragments using painting, drawing, collage, and printmaking. Early works include detailed landscapes and isolated trees drawn in ballpoint pen. A series of houses features his sister's house and El Greco's house in Toledo. Later works zoom in on windows, sometimes using real frames opening onto painted landscapes. Still lifes with bread and flower pots sit before windows. Humans were largely absent until his exile to Italy in 1992, first to Udine then Venice, amid the Yugoslav wars. Darker, more violent works take images from the press—refugee convoys, food distributions—isolating hands and faceless bodies obscured by veils. Recent works include the "Étreintes" series, ambiguous between cradling a newborn or a corpse, with religious references. A catalog is published by Somogy, featuring an interview by Brejon de Lavergnée and texts by Zec, Ivan Lorenovic, and Pascal Bonafoux.