Self-portraits in which Čelebonović presents himself as a detail, a little image, a figure in a mirror, characterize the seventies of the last century, ending with 1983. The artist enters the painting and remains in it. He placed himself in the background of still life, behind the reduced piles of fruit, a glass of wine, which are on the table, in front of a mirror – a self-show. Čelebonović downplays the self-representation, its position in the painting, in relation to the entire composition and its content. It becomes a part of its repertoire, as Lidija Merenik points out, putting herself in a position of double meaning, which in the history of painting is reflected in the manner of in assistenza, and then self-identification with the content. He was born in Belgrade in 1902 in a respectable and wealthy family of lawyer Jakov Čelebonović. He finished elementary school in Belgrade, but after the outbreak of the First World War, he continued his education abroad – he finished high school in Athens and Switzerland, and after high school, he graduated in law at the Sorbonne. During his studies in Paris, he attended sculpture classes with Antoine Bourdel. From 1923, he chose painting as his life’s calling, and two years later, he settled in Saint Tropez, then a small fishing village, where he would stay for the rest of his life. His paintings of the third and fourth decades of the 20th century belong to the very foundations of Serbian interwar modernism. He participated in the Second World War as the commander of the French Resistance Movement, and after the war he worked as a professor of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade. He held high positions in the International Association of Fine Arts at UNESCO, as well as in the associations of artists of Serbia and Yugoslavia. After retiring, he returned to Saint-Tropez and remained there for the rest of his life. He was a member of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and the holder of the most important decorations awarded by Yugoslavia, France and America, for merits in war and peace. He died in Saint Tropez on July 23, 1986.

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