Jovan Pešić
Jovan Pešić was a Serbian warrior artist who fought for the liberation of Old Serbia and Macedonia at the turn of the 20th century, and later in the Great War. Today he is remembered among as the first modern Serbian cartoonists, though totally forgotten until the early 2000s.
Early life and work
Pešić was born in Bukovac near Novi Sad, at the time part of the Slavonian Military Frontier of the Austrian Empire. He was a self-taught artist when he first started to study art, sculpture and photography in a craft shop in Novi Sad. He studied under Đorđe Jovanović. In 1897 Pešić created an eight-page story in caricature showing a sculptor with clay in hand how he created a female figure that suddenly came alive when she began to dance with him. This was inspired by his relationship with Jovanović. More than three decades after his death, Pešić's eight-page strip was first published, in 1969, by the Belgrade's Museum of Applied Arts. Caricatures by Pešić were published in numerous newspapers and popular magazines like Vrača pogačaču, Zvono, and Bosnia and Balkans.Pešić fought as a volunteer in the Serbian Chetnik Organization from its earliest beginning with the earliest battles in 1903, the Battle of Guglin in 1905 and many others until the Young Turk Revolution when the leaders of the Ottoman Millet in 1908 made demands on Turkish leadership to improve the status of her Christian population there. After, he went to Rome to study, and in 1914 he returned home to join the Serbian army in defense of Serbia. Later, he joined Serbian army's retreat through Albania and then left Salonika for Odessa, where he joined the First Serbian Volunteer Division as a soldier and war painter. During the final months of the war, he worked as a war photographer and was decorated with the Albanian Commemorative Medal. He became a member of Lada, the first Serbian art organization and one supportive of diverse artistic innovations of all kinds.