Drugi jezik na kojem je dostupan ovaj članak: Bosnian
By: Ekrem Dupanović
I’ve been staring at this headline and I cannot believe it is true. I cannot … I do not want to believe that Anur is gone – that I will no longer be able to admire his new design solutions, that we won’t hang out together, drink coffee and work together. Anur was the perfect designer, the best I ever met. Each of his creative ideas had something of a philosophical nature, and the realization always had to be perfect. Nothing less than perfect could satisfy him. He was a designer with character. Often banally simple and yet … When we first redesigned Media Marketing magazine, it was done by Anur and Ajna, the then creative directors in Communis. Anur made the first twenty cover pages. I’m sad I didn’t save them. From them (and from the illustrations inside the magazines), today you could make a top-notch exhibition. I remember the issue in which the main topic was a survey with a lot of charts, mostly “pie” ones. Anur went to the pie shop, he bought a pie with meat, he cut it into percentiles from the main chart, and then put it on the front page. “You wanted a ‘pie’ – here’s the original”. I often couldn’t understand him, but I always believed him more than myself.
Twelve years ago we worked on our first book BH Advertising. I went to Anur at Ideologija to make arrangements. He told me he would do it, but only under one condition – that the book has no covers, just the binding gauze on the side, but no covers. When I asked him why, he replied simply because no such book had ever been done. I accepted, though I did not understand – and we got a fantastic book. On the “front” side I wrote an editorial explaining that the book was not completed, as no business process is completed without the cooperation with those who are featured in the book. It was a book about all agencies, media, production houses and print shops in BiH. In everything, I always believed him, and he never steered me wrong. Even when he and Enjo (Anur’s father, founder of the Ars Aevi Museum of Contemporary Art), one Thursday evening, 16 years ago, called me from Venice to come there with Vedrana in the morning, to attend the opening of the first exhibition of Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Venice Biennale. Anur was not someone you would refuse anything, as he had never refused any of the requests of his friends.
He loved design in advertising. And when that love dwindled, he left the job of designer and moved first to the American University, then to the Academy of Fine Arts, Graphic Design Department. He wanted to transfer his knowledge and passion for design to the younger generations. He used to always reject media appearances, he never wanted to talk at any conference or at festivals. He had some crippling fright from public appearances. Suddenly, that changed. He started teaching to students – first one, then second, and then third subject at the American University. He spoke about his students and their mutual relationship with great passion and enthusiasm. They respected him, he worshiped them, and gave himself to them with all his being. When he jumped the “professors” ship, we saw each other less and less. He didn’t have time for anybody anymore.
Destiny would have it that we lost him on November 29th. An incredible coincidence. That day I finished the Creative Portfolio. The first Portfolio – which I published eight years ago as a special edition of Media Marketing magazine on 200 pages – was designed by Anur. Since it was a regional edition, on the cover page he placed a coat of arms of Yugoslavia with the date 29 November, 1943, and instead of the torches, he put brushes into the coat of arms.
Anur was truly a genius.
I still can’t believe he’s gone forever.
I asked three Anur’s friends to write a couple of sentences about him and his work for this issue of Diary.
Slavimir Stoajnović Futro: “When the light goes out suddenly, everyone stops for a moment in time. When a great beacon extinguishes, not only does the time stops, it ceases to be. In order to continue forward, we have to collect the light rays that the beacon had planted in our souls. Anur was our beacon, his works are our beams of light for the future.”
Davor Bruketa, creative director of Bruketa&Žinić&Grey: “Anur Hadžiomerspahic reminded with his work that design first and foremost plays an important social role. He was astute and direct in his social commentary, clear and striking in aesthetics, and truly humane.”
Bojan Hadžihalilović: “The best among us … They say that Anur was the greatest artist among the designers, and the greatest designer among artists.”
Anur’s work was a celebration of design, every poster of his was something new, special, different from everything around us.
Anur had that certain style, that certain aesthetics, that pure idea, that artistic whole, that sharp message and the lesson.
Today, friends, students and colleagues all day talk about Anur, about his students, his collegiality, and what we will always love and cherish – his posters, his artwork, his design.
