About this site
This is an independent archive maintained by an admirer of the painter’s work. It is not run by, affiliated with, or endorsed by the estate of Ljuba Popović.
What this is
An independent reference archive, made by an admirer of the painting. It gathers what is publicly documented about Ljuba Popović — the works, the exhibition history, the biography, the critical literature — into one place that is quick to read and easy to link to.
It is not an authority, and it is not the estate. It has no access to the archive, no role in authentication, nothing for sale, and no commercial relationship with any gallery, dealer or auction house. It carries no advertising and no tracking.
The estate
The painter’s official web presence is maintained by his estate — his widow Slavica Batos and their son Aleksa Popović — at ljuba.fr, with a second site at ljuba-popovic.fr. Those hold the authoritative biography, chronology, decade-by-decade galleries, exhibition and bibliography lists, and the catalogue raisonné.
If you have arrived here looking for the estate, that is where to go. Note in particular that this domain — ljuba-popovic.com — is not the estate’s ljuba-popovic.fr, despite the similarity. Anything concerning authentication, valuation, sale, loans or reproduction rights belongs with the estate and not with this site. See the catalogue raisonné page.
Sources and method
The biography, chronology, exhibition history and bibliography here are compiled from a research dossier assembled from the estate’s own published material, the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, museum records, the critical literature and press reporting.
Two rules govern how that material is presented. First, where sources disagree, both readings appear rather than one being quietly chosen — the dating of La Naissance de l’Homme Cosmique is the clearest example. Second, where a claim rests on secondary reporting rather than a primary record, it is marked with a qualifier rather than asserted flatly. Several claims about Serbian museum holdings fall into that category, as does the often-repeated report that he declined the Légion d’honneur.
39 works are catalogued here, of which 17 are illustrated. Records without a reproduction are marked Image pending. No stock image, no AI-generated image and no image of another painter’s work is ever substituted for a missing plate.
Corrections are welcome and will be made. If something here is wrong, please say so.
Rights and removal
Two separate copyrights attach to every reproduction on this site. The works themselves are © the Estate of Ljuba Popović. The photographs of them are © whoever made them — for most of the plates here, surrealismtoday.com, from whose published pages they were taken; for Figures in Landscape (The Conference), The Art Institute of Chicago, whose catalogue record marks that image as not in the public domain.
Neither has granted a licence for use here. They are reproduced for non-commercial reference and study, at modest resolution, with attribution, and alongside links directing readers to the estate. That is the usual footing for an archive of this kind, and it is offered as an explanation rather than a legal claim.
If you represent the estate, or surrealismtoday.com, and would like any or all of these images removed, they will be taken down on request — promptly, without argument, and without needing a formal notice. The site is built so that every reproduction can be withdrawn by changing a single setting, leaving the written records intact.
The same applies to the text: anything here that the estate considers inaccurate or objectionable will be corrected or removed on request.
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