Maja Maljević
Maja Maljević (b. 1973 – Belgrade, Serbia, 1973) graduated from the School for Design in Belgrade in 1992 and received her BA in Fine Art (1997) and her MA in Fine Art (2000) from the University of Arts, Belgrade. In 2000, she moved to South Africa where she now lives and works as a full-time artist in Johannesburg.
Maljević makes use of bright colours, big strokes and thick layers of paint in her work. She cites Michelangelo as an important inspiration, though her jagged style has much more in common with the New York painter Basquiat. However, it is rock music that truly inspires her. As a child of the nineties, she was influenced by grunge, where followers searched for despair in an era that pretended to shine with optimism. Her bright colours mix and resonate like distorted chords, and the melancholia is reflected in her characters.
She has had successful solo exhibitions in South Africa and completed an important commission for the Raphael Hotel on Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton. She participated in a workshop at David Krut Print Workshop in 2007, and since then she has created several bodies of work with the DKW printmakers. In 2009 she had a solo exhibition at David Krut, Johannesburg, called Into the Spine. She has since gone on to have four additional solo exhibitions with David Krut between 2011 and 2019. In 2015 she began working with Kalashnikovv Gallery who have represented her oil paintings in numerous art fairs around the world and extensively in Berlin, Germany through Kalashnikovv Berlin.
Maljević writes, “I enjoy a visual ensemble that includes the figurative and the abstract, the organic and geometric, the obvious and the elusive. Put them all together and you get an eclectic remix where any one thing can be something else. A portrait can rise out of a still life, a still life can descend into a landscape, a finger is a toe and two legs, slightly parted, might be a whisper. To capture and describe my creative process is like putting music into words – something essential gets lost in translation. How can you record the emotional volume present in the art of listening?”
Maja Maljević has been widely collected by important collections in South Africa, France and the USA. Her work is owned and displayed by many prominent corporate collections which include amongst others: The Spier Arts Collections, Hollard, and Nandos Art Collection.
- The Silence of Change - 2019 in David Krut Projects / New York / USA
- FORMS' - 2019 in Kalashnikovv Gallery / Johannesburg / South Africa
- Polytekton - 2018 in David Krut Projects / Johannesburg / South Africa
- Memento Mori - 2018 in Kalashnikovv Gallery / Johannesburg / South Africa
- The Colourist Manifesto - 2018 in David Krut Projects / Johannesburg / South Africa
- A Contemporary Showcase - 2018 in Graham's Fine Art Gallery & Kalashnikovv Gallery / Johannesburg / South Africa
- Super Salon II - 2017 in Kalashnikovv Gallery / Johannesburg / South Africa
- Occupy II - 2017 in Fried Contemporary / Pretoria / South Africa
- Room With A View - 2017 in Kalashnikovv Gallery / Johannesburg / South Africa
- Salon Hang - 2017 in David Krut Projects / New York / USA
- Nano - 2016 in Bardard Gallery / Cape Town / South Africa
- MANTEGNA | DKW PRINTS - 2016 in MANTEGNA | DKW PRINTS / New York / USA
- Disrupted - 2016 in David Krut Projects / Johannesburg / South Africa
- No End To This - 2015 in No End Contemporary Art Space / Johannesburg / South Africa
- Young Collectors - 2015 in Kalashnikovv Gallery / Johannesburg / South Africa
- Along the Line - 2015 in David Krut Projects / Johannesburg / South Africa
- Carved - 2015 in David Krut Projects / Johannesburg / South Africa
- The Benediction of Shade II - 2014 in David Krut Projects / Johannesburg / South Africa
- Equinox - 2014 in David Krut Projects / Johannesburg / South Africa
- I Take It All Back - 2014 in Nirox Project Space / Johannesburg / South Africa
- Horror Vacui - 2014 in David Krut Projects / Johannesburg / South Africa
- PAPERWORK - 2014 in SMAC Gallery / Stellenbosch / South Africa
- Matrix - 2014 in David Krut Projects / Johannesburg / South Africa
- Back to the Future: Abstract Art in South Africa Past and Present - 2013 in SMAC Gallery / Cape Town / South Africa
- The Painters Show - 2013 in Kalashnikovv Gallery / Johannesburg / South Africa
- Ex Nihilo - 2012 in David Krut Projects / Cape Town / South Africa
- Revisted - 2012 in Nirox Project Space / Johannesburg / South Africa
- Bubbble and Leak - 2011 in David Krut Projects / Johannesburg / South Africa
- 2 Months Thursday - 2010 in David Krut Projects / Johannesburg / South Africa
- Into the Spine - 2009 in David Krut Projects / Johannesburg / South Africa
- The New Spell - 2008 in David Krut Projects / New York / USA
- Bicycle - 2007 in Art Space / Johannesburg / South Africa