125 Years since the Birth of Aleksandar Bojka

Title:: 125 Years since the Birth of Aleksandar Bojka
Date of Issue: 07.04.2021.
Author: Nebojsa Djumic
Type edition: commemorative
Printing techniques: multicolour offset
Sheet: 8+1
Paper: muflep 100g
Printing House: Blicdruk, Sarajevo

SHEET   CANCELLATION

Motive: Aleksandar Bojko
Catalogue no.: 865
Perforation: 13 3/4
Face value: 0,90 BAM
Quantity: 15 000

Aleksandar Bojko was the only citizen of Banja Luka who, during his more than half a century of long artistic creation - from the beginning of the second to the middle of the seventh decade of the 20th century - tried his hand at all three then available visual media: painting, photography and film.

He was born on April 7, 1896 in Foca. His family moved to Banja Luka in 1908, and only a year later Bojko received a camera from his father, which he passed through the most turbulent part of his life and used it to make about a hundred shots on glass photo plates in the First World War. He was an academic painter by profession, and he was educated in Venice, Vienna and Belgrade. In the early thirties of the last century, he began to exhibit his works of art, and his specialty was still life and landscapes. He taught painting at the Teachers' and Higher Pedagogical School, and the Gymnasium in Banja Luka.

In addition to painting, he regularly recorded the world around him on glass plates and celluloid with his camera, classifying the photographs into several cycles: "Cities and landscapes of Bosnia and Herzegovina", "Monuments of Ottoman culture", "Personalities"... Behind him was left an impressive opus of about 1,500 photographs and photo-negatives, of inestimable cultural-historical, ethnographic and ethnological significance.

Aleksandar Bojko was also one of the pioneers of amateur film in Banja Luka. In the period from 1938 to 1963, he shot about three hours of moving pictures, which represent an extremely valuable film archive about life in the pre-war, war and post-war city on the banks of the Vrbas. The real pearls in the series of his documentaries are the war chronicle of occupied Banja Luka called "Banja Luka in the war" (1941-1945) and the two-part "Bosnia that passed" (1939-1963), in which Bojko is on a celluloid tape eight millimeters wide forever imprinted the architecture, life and customs of a time, long gone.

During his life, this versatile artist tried his hand as an (episodic) actor in the film "Blacksmith of the Crucifix" (1919), directed by Heinz Hanus, he was an avid motorcycle lover, and he owned one of the richest collections of butterflies in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia ... He passed away on August 2, 1969 in Banja Luka ...

Author: Nebojsa Djumic

Publisher: Poste Srpske ad Banjaluka

Cooperation: Goran Barac, publicist from Banjaluka