Milić Stanković (1934－2000), known by the artistic pseudonym Militch de Matchva, was one of the most famous Serbian painters of 20th century.
He had provocative behaviour, and eccentric, temperament personality; he was uncompromising and explicit in his attitudes, also in artistic as in everyday life. Beside painting, he was working as an architect, sculpture making, writing prose and poetry, acting, and he also was politically active. He was devoted to Serbian tradition and history.
His birth land, Mačva, was an inexhaustible inspiration to him. He was simultaneously studying at Faculty of Architecture and at Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade for three years. He graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade in 1959, as a Kosta Hakman and Ljubica Cuca Sokić’s student. At Faculty of Architecture, he was friends with Predrag Ristić, Đorđe Kadijević, Leonid Šejka, Siniša Vuković, Vladimir Veličković; at Academy of Fine Arts, his closest friends were Miorag Dado Đurić, Uroš Tošković, Olja Ivanjicki, Kosta Bradić, Mihailo Čumić, Prvoslav Arsić. He was also fiends with Miro Glavurtić, Milovan Vidak and Svetozar Samurović. Soon after they met, these talented and free-minded people founded Artistic group Mediala, which was active from 1953 to 1959. The group’s primary goal was to renew painting on Renaissance painting basics, and, also, finding artistic mode to neutralize the rigid patterns of social realism. Direct role models to these young artists were surrealist Salvador Dalí, the founder of the metaphysical school of painting Giorgio de Chirico, dadaist Max Ernst, and the Northern Renaissance painters, Pieter Brueghel the Elder and Hieronymus Bosch. He became a lifelong member of The World Association Fan-tasmatists in Brussels, in April 1958.
He became well-known by the motives he used to paint, particularly for his flying tree logs, then, fire balls and blocks of ice. He was called “Serbian Dalí ” and “Painter of The Flying Logs”. A very original Surrealism he defined through his work he upgraded adding the elements of mysticism, superstition, and fantasy. His painting was characterized as the unique combination of figural Surrealism and Naïve art. Milić Stanković’s exhibitions were very original, unusual by their opening time and by the locations.
Stanković was actively working, painting and writing, until his death in 2000, highly contributing to building the Serbian contemporary art scene. He wrote autobiographical book called “Militch de Matchva”. He died at the age of 67, and his grave takes place in Alley of Meritorious Citizens, at the New Cemetery in Belgrade.