On the work of Belgrade architect Jovan Bjelović

The influx of modern ideas and modernization of life marking the 1930s encouraged the generation of young architects, fresh from university, to embark on a career in designing. Among them was Jovan Bjelovic (1903-1977) whose work has been neglected in the surveys of Belgrade interwar architecture. Having joined the studio of Đura Borosic who was a member of a group of modern movement architects, Bjelovic hurl-self adopted the style which was increasingly gaining ground. Having set up a studio of his own in 1934, he designed a number of residential buildings in the city centre thereby giving his contribution to the present-day cityscape. His work reflects the stages that modern architecture went through in the process of its maturation during the 1930s. His early projects show an early modernist approach with some measure of decorativism which, in 1935-37, was expressed in the spirit of Art De-co. Going through the phase of mature modernism, he distilled his forms and came closer to a monumentalist tendency. His later designs, mostly those of 1939, reveal a distilled, almost Cubist, style resulting in clear and powerful solutions. At the same time, Bjelovic received many commissions and, satisfying the investors' tastes, followed trends that made Serbian modernism slide into a sort of mannerism, typical of a number of his designs. Close to the architects Belobrk, Prljevic and Marinkovic in ever)- respect, Bjelovic may be considered a prominent exponent of Belgrade modernism in the 1930s although he never entered major architectural contests in the capital. His emigration to Brazil in 1952 is the likely reason that his work has sunk into oblivion, but the recognizable sight of more than seventy buildings he designed in Belgrade within a short span of time still stands as evidence to the importance of his presence.