Lazar Drljača, the famous Bosnian academic painter and the last Bogumil, as he called himself, was born back in 1882 near Bosanska Krupa, and died on July 13, 1970, in Konjic at the age of 88. He was born in a rural, poor family. Wanting to get an education, his parents sent him to Sarajevo, where he arrived in 1896 and finished his locksmith trade. In 1906, he graduated from the Technical High School, and in the same year, he passed the admission exam at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.
Lazar Drljača, the last Bogomil
Five years later, at the invitation of Christian Gripenkerl, he participated in the International Art Exhibition in Rome, and after Rome, young Lazar went to the lights of Paris.
Biographers state that he came to Konjic in 1931 with a two-wheeler, which he made himself, and settled in Borci, in a shepherd’s hut, far from people and the world. He rarely exhibited and sold his paintings – only “yes, sometimes so he has something to live on”, so from 1930 to 1962, only the people of Mostar, Cetinje, Sarajevo, Kotor and Herzegovina saw them.
When he came to Konjic, he decided to live there, and until then he traveled extensively while his works of art attracted great attention and admiration. He loved to paint and transfer his emotions to the canvas, and his numerous works bear witness to this. He even stated on one occasion that he paints because he loves, and exhibits only to survive. He was a great lover of nature and to make paintings, he made paints from natural materials that he found on the Prenj Mountain.
During the Second World War, passing armies tore up and destroyed his numerous paintings, which was a great sadness for this important artist. The works he painted during his most fruitful painting period have disappeared. He had two larger canvases left on the easel, from which he scraped the paint and material and used it to make himself a suit. After that, the authorities of Konjic municipality gave him the Šantić villa to live in, where he lived for the rest of his life.
Some of his most famous works are: “Portrait of Bertha” (Potrtet od Berte), “Copernicus”(Kopernik), “Capinera”, “From
Bosnian hamlets”(Iz bosanske mahale), “The Three Horsemen” (Tri konjanika), “On the way from Florence to Viterbo”, “Colorist bum”,
“Portrait of an old man” and others.
As far back as 1932, Lazar Drljača said about himself: “You see, after Rome and Paris, where I worked and exhibited, I became a real, hard Bosnian peasant. I am, in fact, Bogumil.” His only and greatest wish was to be buried as Bogumil. He was buried next to the Šantić Villa, where he lived for many years. The stećak on his grave was discovered in August 2010. On the stećak it is written: “Let it be known that since they placed a stećak on me, neither travelers on earth nor stars in the sky can lead me astray, dead and living, I have been a signpost”.
With the aim of preserving the memory of two great men, Lazar Drljača and Zulfikar Zuko Džumhur, the art school “Zuko i Lazo” has been operating in Konjic for many years as part of the Association for the Protection of Cultural and Historical Heritage.
Today, in the corner of the Heritage Museum dedicated to Lazar Drljača, you can see two original paintings by Lazar Drljača, “Copernicus” and “Portrait of an Old Man”.
