“In the Absence of Evidence” — Exhibition by Predrag Koraksić Corax

The exhibition “In the absence of evidence” opens on February 12 at 7 p.m. in the space M90 ​​(Kneza Miloša 3, Belgrade), and will last until March 30 everyday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Predrag Koraksić Corax is one of the most important Serbian political cartoonists and one of the few authors whose works from the nineties seem almost disturbingly current today. His caricatures created during the breakup of Yugoslavia, the wars and the authoritarian rule of Milošević, today, with minimal “aesthetic” changes, are read again as precise comments on contemporary political reality. Maybe some actors are not present now, but with a subtle change in hairstyle and facial features, the same caricatures from the nineties are painfully current and accurately describe what is happening to us today.

Corax was born in 1933 in Čačak. He spent his childhood in exile, as his father was killed by Chetniks at the beginning of the Second World War. He completed high school in Zemun and studied architecture in Belgrade. He began working as a cartoonist in 1950 in the satirical magazine Jež, launching a long and courageous media career that would make him one of the most recognizable critics of political power in Serbia.

Over the decades, he has been publishing cartoons in numerous newspapers and magazines, including Večernje novosti, Borba, Naša Borba, and Vreme. Since the founding till today, he has been regularly publishing his cartoons in the daily newspaper Danas.
In 2004, he was awarded the French Order of the Legion of Honour for his work.

Corax’s drawing style, always unique and instantly recognizable, was shaped under the strong influence of the American cartoonist and illustrator Saul Steinberg, which is why his earliest drawings were executed exclusively with pen. Artists such as Pjer Križanić and Ivan Lučev were also among his role models, with Ivan Lučev playing a particularly significant role: at the beginning of Corax’s career at Jež, Lučev gave him anatomy lessons and encouraged him to switch to working with a brush, a technique that would become one of the hallmarks of his artistic signature. Political cartooning was Corax’s primary interest from the very beginning. With the rise of Slobodan Milošević on the political scene, he began, without hesitation, an open and uncompromising critique of the regime and its policies. During the eleven years of Milošević’s rule, from the 1990s until 2001, Corax published around four thousand cartoons that clearly, courageously, and precisely bore witness to the reality of that time.
The exhibition In the Absence of Evidence presents a concise selection of the artist’s works from the 1990s in dialogue with contemporary cartoons created over the past five years and published in Danas.