Born in Kavadarci, Macedonia | 1956
In 1981 he graduated from the Academy of Arts in Belgrade, where he also studied as a post-graduate (1983-5). From the outset of his career Stefanov treated sculpture as an object or an installation of objects. In the mid-1980s he set up several installations and assemblages made of cotton, straw, grass, clay and wood in public sites in Kavadarci, as well as in galleries in Skopje, Belgrade and Zagreb. In 1986 he held a one-man exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Skopje, displaying the series Kites, made of straw. In 1988 he settled in London, where the narrative aspects of his work shifted from mythology to religion. In the early 1990s he produced a series of objects and installations entitled Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones in the form of angels’ wings and discs, executed in straw and boards or tree trunks and branches. These he set up in the Whitechapel Art Gallery (1989), London, the Grizedale Forest (1990) in Cumbria and in Cirencester (1991). In 1993, together with the sculptor Petre Nikoloski (b 1959), he exhibited in the Macedonian section of the 45th Venice Biennale.
We present Gligor’s artworks from the series of works signed by Stefanov and included in the collection of MoCA:
Grabbing from the Space, 1985, straw on wooden support, 190 х 130 х 10 cm | Research with Hemp Canvas and Terra-Cotta, 1981, hemp canvas, terra-cotta, metal wire, 58x70x24cm
