Biography

Born in Zemun, Serbia in 1939, Milorad Tepavac is among the greatest abstract Serbian sculptors alive today. He began his academic career studying sculpture in the early 1960s, attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade. Here he received his undergraduate, graduate and post-graduate degrees, finally completing his studies in 1970. While at university, he studied directly under famed sculptor and Olympian Jovan Kratohvil, who was the creator of the Soviet plane crash memorial at Mount Avala in Serbia. The work of Tepavac explores various sculptural methods of invoking within the viewer feelings of inner contemplation and unconscious impulses, both through combining unconventional materials in novel ways but also by attempting to imbue a narrative within his works. Tepavac has won numerous awards through his career, both for design and sculpture, but his most significant accolades came after the completion of his commission to build a public memorial sculpture at Požarevac, Serbia to honor the National Liberation War fighters. After creating this work he was soon after granted a professorship at his former school, the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade. He retired from teaching there in 2004. Tepavac continues to create interesting new work and displays it in exhibitions around the former Yugoslav region and beyond. He currently resides in Belgrade with his family.