"Dramatic Classics Through the Eyes of Graphic Designers"

I am happy to announce that four of my posters for the JDP-Yugoslav Drama Theater in Belgrade were included in the theater posters exhibition at the International Festival of Small Stages, organized by HKD Teatar, Rijeka, Croatia. The exhibition was opened on May 3rd, 2025.

Text excerpts from the exhibition catalogue:
"Dramatic classics through the eyes of graphic designers

A look back at the three decades of the Rijeka Festival of Small Stages will help us understand the global and technological changes that have occurred during that period. It was a period in which the material world dissolved into the digital, and the boundary between physical and virtual reality became increasingly difficult to perceive. Communication is layered into numerous new forms that are already difficult to follow, and social networks are an unavoidable part of our everyday lives. In this context, we could experience the poster as an outdated medium of communication. However, it still resists being removed from the theater facade and retains its printed form.

That is precisely why this 'traditional' medium has been a frequent content and topic of accompanying exhibitions of festival programs over the past three decades. Through numerous exhibitions of theatre posters, the MFMS presented interesting selections of individual authorial opuses, contemporary design creations or national selections to the Rijeka and festival audiences."—Jolanda Todorović, exhibition curator

You can find out more about my JDP posters here.

Nezumi by Mamoru Uchiyama

My recent acquisition is this page of manga Nezumi (chapter 3) by Mamoru Uchiyama from 1999. I bought this page not only because it's drawn well, but also because I have never seen in comics somebody giving so much real state to the bottom of a foot. I found it very effective. 

Here, here, here, here, here, and here you can see some of my other manga acquisitions.

 

The Front Page of "Cazador y presa" by Arturo Del Castillo

My latest acquisition is the original front page of the comic Cazador y presa by Arturo Del Castillo. I am quite pleased to get this one because I already have this comic's third and last pages. You can see them here and here. 

What is beautiful about Arturo's drawing is how gentle and seemingly easily drawn it is. He doesn't even bother to erase the pencil drawing, which, by the way, is very minimal. 

Most of the time, the only corrections he had, as in this case, were when he changed his mind and whitened out the frames around the images.  And because he used fabric dipped in ink to make textures, which was hard to control, he corrected that with white gouache.

You can see other Arturo Del Castillo's comic page in my collection here. 

 

Eldorado in the name of western democracy

Here are a few photos of the JDP-Yugoslav Drama Theater's lobby with my poster for the play "Eldorado" by Marius von Mayenburg.

 

It's unfortunately good timing for this play.

 

The play starts, as the smoke rises from another city saved by coalition bombs, with a graphic account of a city where the government quarter is in ruins, refugees are confined to the sports stadium and animals have fled the bombed-out zoo. But although devastation for the majority becomes an investment opportunity for the minority, the play deals with the mental disintegration that accompanies urban disaster. Anton, an estate agent seeking to sell a surviving complex to his rich mother-in-law, becomes progressively more unhinged. 

 

Behind the play lies an implicit question: how do we go on living when unspeakable crimes are being committed in the name of western democracy?

 

You can see more of my JDP posters her.

 

  

  

  

The Puppets of Zlatko Bourek

On March 6th, the exhibition "Uglies: The Puppets of Zlatko Bourek" opened at Galerija Kresija in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The exhibition was curated by Tjaša Juhart of the Puppet Museum of the Ljubljana Puppet Theatre.

Zlatko Bourek mostly created for an adult audience. The exhibition also presents his cult play Hamlet, which was the biggest hit in the field of puppet performances for adults in his oeuvre. In this, he first staged his own derivative of the Japanese technique of cart puppets, which the animators hold in their laps and lend them their legs. The play was a turning point for both Croatian puppetry and puppetry in the former commonwealth. It is inscribed in the canon of world puppetry, and it has traveled practically the entire world.

Zlatko was a true Renaissance man. He was a painter, sculptor, costume designer, scenographer, and illustrator. He directed theatre plays, feature films, and animated movies. 

I was pleased to see that the curator of the exhibition, Tjaša Juhart, decided to include my poster for his play Hamlet in the exhibition.

I met Zlatko for the first time when I was seventeen years old and I had a summer job working at Zagreb Film. In 1981 I was fortunate to design a poster for his puppet show of Hamlet by Tom Stoppard.

He was one of the most generous, soft-spoken people I have ever met. That's probably why we became friends, and that's probably why he painted me in one of his paintings.

 

Tattooed Part 2

In 1996, I was asked to create an image for the new single Bulls on Parade by Rage Against the Machine. I’ve always loved the band and had already done a few other things for them. I really liked the song and its message and energy.

I drew inspiration from the first verse of the song : "The microphone explodes, shattering the molds". I quickly drew an image with a marker, thinking it needed to be as rough and energetic as the song. The image was mostly printed in negative, that way, it became even more visually dramatic.

The art was used in several applications, including singles, CDs, posters and even T-shirts. You can see some of them below.

What I didn’t expect was how many people would choose to get the image tattooed on themselves. Here are some photos.

 

My New Poster Design for JDP-Yugoslav Drama Theater

I am pleased to share my new poster design and illustration for the play "Eldorado" by Marius von Mayenburg for JDP-Yugoslav Drama Theater in Belgrade, Serbia.

The play starts, as the smoke rises from another city saved by coalition bombs, with a graphic account of a city where the government quarter is in ruins, refugees are confined to the sports stadium and animals have fled the bombed-out zoo. But although devastation for the majority becomes an investment opportunity for the minority, the play deals with the mental disintegration that accompanies urban disaster. Anton, an estate agent seeking to sell a surviving complex to his rich mother-in-law, becomes progressively more unhinged. 

Behind the play lies an implicit question: how do we go on living when unspeakable crimes are being committed in the name of Western democracy?

Here below, you can see my poster designs from the last eight seasons for JDP-Yugoslav Drama Theater. Some of the seasons had fewer shows due to Covid. For every season of JDP, I create a slightly different look.

This season, designing the posters, I try to emphasize diagonal composition and dark, realistic illustrations. It seems it's not only appropriate for the subjects of the plays, but also appropriate for the times we are currently living in.

More about my JDP's posters and my other work can be seen here.