Ivan
Blatnik.

Ivan Blatnik (b. 1985, Niš^[1],[2]) is a Serbian painter, caricaturist and designer of the younger generation who entered the country's visual scene after graduating from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Niš — first in graphic design, then in interior design. The Serbian Wikipedia entry describes him as "creatively curious and personally unassuming, but decisively sensitive and inventive," with "impeccable drawing and design skills."^[1]

His caricatures have travelled further than his person: they earned him the Yomiuri Shinbun prize in Japan, first prize at Belgrade's Mali Pjer competition, and — three times — a Special Award of the City of Belgrade.^[1] Alongside the drawing practice he has designed a number of books, posters, business cards, brochures and catalogues, and completed a series of interior-design projects.^[1]

He works in the long shadow — and, increasingly, alongside — his father Aleksandar Blatnik (1944–), architect, caricaturist and painter, a "Distinguished Artist" of ULUPUDS with a Lifetime Achievement Award to his name.^[6] Since the early 2010s the two have shown their canvases wall-to-wall in a recurring joint exhibition simply titled Blatnik & Blatnik, from Zaječar and Knjaževac to Pirot and Prague.^[1],[2],[4]

Where the father paints heroes of everyday life pinned against the icons of the twentieth century — Toulouse-Lautrec, Modigliani, Picasso, Novak Đoković — the son opens what Wikipedia's editors call "the question of the duality of human nature," setting a chromatically expressive figure against a geometric, monochromatically resolved ground.^[1] The ordinary man arrives on his canvases dressed as Tesla, as Nemanja Radulović, as Picasso.