In Memoriam: Bratsa Bonifacho, 1937–2024
Last summer, when the Vancouver Art Gallery announced the current exhibition Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s–1980s (to April 21), my first thought was of Bratsa Bonifacho, the Belgrade-born, Vancouver-based artist known for his abstract paintings and ludic enthusiasm. Bonifacho’s work would benefit from an adjacent exhibition that provides a context for its creation; that he passed away on the eve of the exhibition opening seemed consistent with the social and aesthetic ironies of that context, like those in the films of another Belgradian, Dušan Makavejev (1932–2019).
In the mid-2010s I did a studio visit with Bonifacho, where I learned of his early years in Tito’s Yugoslavia, his celebrated rooftop bull’s eye paintings, and a love of jazz that led to the formation of the Braca Bonfacije Dixie Quintet, in which he played drums (1957–60). After he settled in Vancouver in 1973, Bonifacho’s interest in language, technology, geometry, colour and political activism resulted in a range of luminescent, largely mood-driven oil paintings. Though some of these works manifest in swirling expressive forms, many more are organized in a gridded system.
Something else I learned from our visit: the more I looked at Bonifacho’s paintings, the more I was reminded of some banners I had seen on the Burrard and Cambie Street Bridges a few years earlier—what turned out to be the 50th anniversary of Vancouver’s City Summer Banner Program, featuring works by local legends Bill Reid, Jack Shadbolt and Toni Onley, among others. I mentioned this to Bonifacho and asked if he had been inspired by the gridded letter works. “Inspired!” he beamed. “Inspired enough to have made them!” RIP Bratsa.
