About Artist

Pavel Pavel Čáni was born on June 19, 1953 in Kačarevo in a teacher’s family. He inherited his artistic talent from his father Pavle. He finished high school in Bački Petrovac in 1972, and two years later, he continued his education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Novi Sad with Professor Halil Tikveš. That same year, he had his first joint exhibition at the Art Salon “Srem 74” in Sremska Mitrovica.
In 1980, he realized his first solo exhibition in Split. He continued his artistic training at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade with Professor Marko Krsmanović.
During his studies, he organized two solo exhibitions in Novi Sad and Gložan and won several awards: the Lazar Vozarević Gallery Award in 1978, the Art Salon Award in Sremska Mitrovica (1979, 1980 and 1982) and the Graphic Collective Gallery Award. in Belgrade (1981).

During this period, Pavel Čáni discovered the subordinate potential of the artistic expression of motifs, such as roofs and tiles, which became a trademark of his graphic creation.
Later, he applied his artistic and aesthetic experiences, which were made possible by the line, in finding linear structures of the ceiling and paved road. Based on experience, from a rational-constructive approach to the topic, he creates graphic scenes with urban and rural architectural themes.
 At the seventh solo exhibition in Novi Sad in 1989, Pavel Pavel Čáni presented his entire artistic work, from simple monochrome forms to more complex, complex art themes, figurative relationships and exteriors. During this period, his work approached painting. Colors become carriers of artistic values. The monochromatism of graphic sheets with tile motifs replaced polychromatism, and the multitude of colors prevailed over the black color from the previous creative period.
The unique lyrical mood of these Pavel Čáni’s graphics, in fact, could not exist without color.
In his artistic work, Pavel Čáni only a year later began to synthesize the acquired experiences. In 1987, on the graphic sheets “Excursion”, “Emancipation” and “Encounter”, he expressed interest in allegorical themes, abandoned colors and paid more attention to the values of the line. Increased narration, the inclusion of fantasy and imagination in the creative process are a consequence of the emphasized poetic-meditative tone, which is present in the graphic work of Pavle Pavel Čáni and in the present.
The complete synthesis of creative experiences came in 1989 during the realization of the cycle of graphic sheets “Granica”, where he sought a return to polychromatism, ie colors. In this cycle, Pavel Čáni tried to demystify and detabuze eroticism in an artistic and allegorical way.

He persisted in the established artistic and aesthetic concept during the creation of the cycle of graphics called “Iron Birds” from 1991. With these iron birds, it is possible to peek inside, where the complex terrifying mechanism of the machine is located. In this cycle, we rediscover the basic characteristic of Pavel Čáni’s newer artistic creation, which is reflected in the fantastic appearance and the creation of unusual connections.
Since 1994, Pavel Pavel Čáni has been creating a new cycle of graphic sheets, in which he relativizes the final form of printing of individual graphic sheets. Some graphic sheets of this cycle are made of prints of numerous round shapes, reminiscent of old coins of various contents: from old symbols, auto-citations of earlier Pavel Čáni’s prints to citations of modern world mass culture. Pavel Čáni’s graphic pseudo-coin on the graphic sheet shapes various structures, a qualitatively new return to the experiences from the author’s first creative period is noticed. Based on citations of ancient cultures and auto-citations of details, we can state the application of postmodernist artistic procedures.
In the second half of the 1990s, Pavel Čáni exhibited independently in Slovakia for the second time. During this period, he remained faithful to the technique of intaglio printing. He creates numerous graphics of smaller dimensions, and combines them on a common graphic sheet. Combinations of graphic miniatures are mostly unrepeatable. This novelty of his artistic work in the graphic cycle “Orbis Pictus” testifies to the nurturing of the metalevel of the author’s attitude towards the graphic medium. The rich meditative narrative at the level of an independent graphic sheet is now only one of the segments for aesthetic assessment.
At a solo exhibition at the Cultural Center in Novi Sad, he used his graphic sheets as material for collage and art objects. At the 6th Biennial of Slovak Fine Artists in Petrovac, he also used his graphic sheets as material for an art wall installation, which shows new procedures of postmodernist expression and the layering of possible levels of aesthetic reception of Pavel Čáni’s artistic work.