Mirko Ilić designed his first poster for the Yugoslav Drama Theatre back in 2017 for the production of Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman, directed by Slobodan Unkovski. Since then, during the intervening six seasons, posters designed by Mirko Ilić have always been there to announce the opening of every new production and many of these posters were exhibited and received awards around the world.
With the beginning of our new season and celebrations around the YDT’s 75th anniversary, we will also be celebrating our cooperation with this world renowned designer starting on Friday, 8th September in front of the Belgrade City Library at 56 Knez Mihajlova Street. There, we will be exhibiting posters for Yugoslav Drama Theatre productions designed by Mirko Ilić over the last six seasons. The exhibition will also include the poster for the new production of Pains of Youth by Ferdinand Bruckner, directed by Jovana Tomić, scheduled to open on Saturday, 16th September as the most recent example of our exciting and successful cooperation with Mirko Ilić.
Not only is Ilić one of the best, most renowned and prominent world designers, but he is also a sort of icon of his time. His work in art, graphic design, illustration, comics and art direction has left an indelible mark not only on the period toward the end of 1970s and the entire decade of 1980s, but they will forever remain present not only in our mind’s eye but in that of this entire region and the rest of the world.
Paradoxically, Mirko Ilić is both an iconoclast and an iconophile. He is someone who establishes permanent visual identities but has no qualms about bold interventions in conventional, tired and exhausted content, without giving an inch to the lazy eye and weariness of the spirit. And this is what makes him an artist who is forever young, in the words of Bob Dylan. And always surprising and always relevant.
Following its decades long tradition of encouraging striking visual content, not only in graphic design but in the general artistic outlook and its impact on its audiences and society in general, the Yugoslav Drama Theatre will take advantage of this exhibition to display the results of this very successful cooperation which has also resulted in numerous awards.
The exhibition closes on 19th September.
