Bp. Maxim Opens Literary Portrait Exhibition in Banja Luka

BANJA LUKA, BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA — Bp. Maxim of Western America has opened an exhibition of 60 acrylic portraits at the Museum of Republika Srpska titled “Faces Behind the Words: Reading Great Writers in Color.” The exhibition brings together depictions of writers, poets, thinkers, theologians, and other figures whose works have influenced Serbian, regional, and world culture.

Among those portrayed are John Steinbeck, Albert Camus, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Anaïs Nin, T. S. Eliot, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Miloš Crnjanski, Meša Selimović, Jovan Dučić, Petar Kočić, and Branko Ćopić. The paintings are arranged thematically around the relationship between face and personhood, literature and painting, and word and color. Bishop Maxim said the project seeks to direct visitors beyond famous names toward the persons and books represented by each portrait.

At the opening, Bp. Maxim emphasized reading as an act of attention and discernment in an age characterized by rapid information and shortened attention spans. He recalled St. Basil the Great’s counsel that young Christians should approach classical authors like bees gathering from flowers only what can be made into honey. “Reading is not merely the accumulation of knowledge,” he said, describing it instead as “an exercise in attention and discernment,” through which a person learns to encounter others without reducing them to preconceived ideas.

Bp. Maxim explained that the portraits developed over years of reading and engagement with literary works. “Painting thus became a kind of reverse translation: from words back into a face, from a sentence into color, from the literary world into a gaze,” he said. He added, “A face can never be fully translated,” describing portraiture as “attention without greed, closeness without possession.” The exhibition gives particular attention to Petar Kočić and Branko Ćopić, whose portraits connect their literary work with the landscapes and memories of Krajina.

The exhibition is accompanied by a monograph of the same title, published by the Museum of Republika Srpska in cooperation with St. Sebastian Press of Los Angeles. The opening was attended by Metr. Dimitrije of Zahumlje-Herzegovina and Ston-Coastlands and Bp. Kirilo of Buenos Aires and South-Central America, along with clergy and visitors. Concluding his remarks, Bp. Maxim encouraged young people to read both local and international authors, even when they disagree with them, praying that the exhibition might lead at least one young person to a book that could become “a window, a companion, or a lamp.”

Previously, the UOJ reported that the Serbian Diocese will host its second Iconography Camp at Shadeland.