Professor Vojislav Djuric

Vojislav Djuri_ was born on 26 February 1925 in the Velika Pisanica, Croatia, and graduated from the University of Beograd in the history of art in 1949. Until 1950 he worked as a research assistant at the national museum in Beograd and then returned to the university as an assistant to Professor Svetozar Radoj_i_. His doctoral dissertation on `The Dubrovnik School of Painting' followed in 1956. For a year, 1953-4, he studied under the late André Grabar, Hon.F.S.A., at the Ecole Pratiques des Hautes Etudes in Paris, and there began his concentration on Byzantine art, particularly that of the Adriatic coast. In 1957 he was appointed senior lecturer in Yugoslav art of the Middle Ages at the university of Beograd, associate professor in 1962 and professor in 1967, a position he held until retirement in 1988. Djuric's pioneer researches in Serbia and Macedonia sought to identify Byzantine sources and artists and to assess the degree of Italian influence in Balkan art and architecture. His work included an important study of the monastery of Chilander and the iconography of Serbian kings and clerical dignitaries, making extensive use of documentary sources such as literary works and legislative papers. Djuric received many awards and prizes in recognition of his outstanding achievements both in scholarship and in the protection of ancient monuments, notably the prestigious Austrian Herderpreis in 1982. He served for three years as president of the Association of Societies of Historians of Art of Yugoslavia and was a member of the International Committee on the History of Art and the National Committee of Yugoslavia for the Study of Byzantology. Serious scholar though he was, Djurac was an advocate of popular education and expended much time and energy in preparing material for documentary films on art and artists in Serbia from the Middle Ages onwards and edited a series of twelve popular books on Art in the World. Djuric was elected a full member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in 1978 and was a vice-president of the Society of Serbian-Greek Friendship. His bibliography comprises well over two hundred items, some of which have been translated into English or French, and he was a member of the editorial board of Gesta. He edited two reviews: Hilandarski Zbornik (Recueil de Chilandar) published by the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and Zographe (Revue d'art Médiévale) published by the Institute for History of Art in Beograd. He died on 12 March 1996.