The painting “Fish Market” is one of Josić’s figural compositions of a monumental character, dominated by sails and healthy figures of women and children. When it comes to form, they are slightly stylized shapes, beautiful sculptural bodies and regular facial features. According to the purity of the lines, the solidity of the drawings and the emphasized three-dimensionality of the figures, that is the legacy of the indirect cubist concept. Mladen Josić was born in Bečej in 1897. After graduating from high school, he enrolled in the School of Arts and Crafts in 1913. His drawing teacher was the famous Ljuba Ivanović, who increased the young artist’s interest in drawing. World War I interrupted schooling, which would continue in the fall of 1919. He went to Paris in 1921/22, to the studio of Antoine Bourdel, where he found Milo Milunović and Risto Stijović. Paris is followed by his artistic career, uncertain, certainly dynamic, and insufficiently researched. He died in Paris in 1972. On a narrower level, Mladen Josić’s painting belongs to the circle of the Belgrade school of painting, to the wing that we bring under the notion of poetic realism. On a broader scale, he is a typical representative of the Mediterranean culture and traditions of our region. At the same time, love for the human figure and character, that primordial archetype of the collective unconscious, is recognized as his personal, deep sign.

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