Mehmed Zaimović
The Feeling of Summer
July 24 – August 29, 2026
The National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina
From Friday, July 24, 2026, the National Gallery of Bosnia and Herzegovina will present The Feeling of Summer, an exhibition featuring a selection of paintings by Mehmed Zaimović from the Gallery’s collection.
Everything Mehmed Zaimović created was an attempt to make the transcendental visible. Within the world of his paintings—open to the unknown and the infinite—the viewer may, depending on individual perception, discern intimations of structures and cosmic movements, visions of processes unfolding in nature and in the realm of the spirit, the metamorphoses of life, the universal interconnectedness and complementarity of forces that create and destroy, the spontaneous conception and germination of life, and its mental, physiological, and biological functions. Through a rich yet concealed network of symbols, he sought to evoke the molecules and atoms of sound, dreams, memory, flow, assault, penetration, as well as of time itself: morning, dawn, daybreak, day, dusk, night, months, and years. In short, he explored a wide range of imaginary and universal themes—the relationships between the human being and the world.
His art is an existential act: an attempt to comprehend the world and his own human destiny within it. Consistently conceived and profoundly convincing, it is distinguished by a disciplined execution and patient craftsmanship worthy of respect.
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To many, despite his persistent efforts to keep his artistic credo alive and vital, he may appear a rather monotonous painter who occasionally lapses into the decorative. Yet he is one of the few artists who, amid the stylistic upheavals of recent decades, never compromised his work in pursuit of fashionable trends or immediate relevance, as so many of his contemporaries did. He succeeded in preserving his integrity and individuality, his consistently recognizable visual language, and his faith in the path he had chosen.
Meliha Husedžinović, Mehmed Zaimović: Monograph, 2002.
Mehmed Zaimović is one of the most significant Bosnian and Herzegovinian painters of the second half of the twentieth century. He graduated from the School of Applied Arts in Sarajevo in 1961. Over the course of more than five decades, he developed a distinctive painterly language in which abstract form is interwoven with symbolic and meditative reflections on nature, time, and the human condition.
He presented his work in more than sixty solo exhibitions and over five hundred group exhibitions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and abroad, receiving numerous awards and distinctions. He was a Full Member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ANUBiH).