could be proud of its then team of caricaturists: Ranko Guzina, theatres. From then I would forever remember Hamlet played who recently passed away, Predrag Koraksić ‘Corax’ and Dušan by Branko Pleša, then I childishly fell in love with actress Rada Petričić! Recalling this time, in the late sixties and seventies, Đuričin, who knew Mile Sajić and who sometimes led us home to the end of the life of lifelong Yugoslav President Josip Broz after the performances. I must have been very ridiculous. And Tito, it is also interesting to talk about what then represented then I practically, along with those works of mine that I was a political caricature: very keen on, determined my journey and my future.” “We could draw everything we wanted, with only a single, Dušan’s older brother completed architecture studies and clear prohibition – you cannot make fun of Tito. Everything that was considered a decent and serious profession at that else was possible. Corax, Ranko and I slowly, step by step, time. His parents expected the younger son to choose somepushed backed those boundaries and conquered new freething equally as wise and practical, but he enrolled at the Academy of Applied Arts. The first two years covered studies in the general direction, and after that he had to decide. He passed the entrance exam for interior architecture, but after two or three months he realised that this was not his choice, but rather that he’d thought that this would perhaps meet his parents’ expectations. He transferred to the Fine Art Department, where he also passed the entrance exam, and completed the third year of studies. Once again he realised that this did not suit him, and by then he was already working as a designer and technical editor at the then prestigious magazine Vidici: “All exalted, full of ideas, I worked on that newspaper extremely creatively and it was seen somewhere DUŠAN with mother and father by Professor Bogdan Kršić. He heard that I was a student at the Academy doms. Admittedly, that was a time when that We now live with and asked me if I would transfer to communist, socialist regime had already becompletely distorted his department. And so I finally fingun to show signs of relaxing. We worked on criteria and our children the wave of these first noticeable tolerances ished in the graphical department, which had been my secret wish from grow up in a society that as was done at that time throughout Eastern Europe, only that in our country that was the beginning, but I did not dare to does not give them a incomparably freer. Czechoslovakia, and Poapply for fear that I would not pass. chance to recognise the land in particular, had very strong caricaturI thought that was unattainable for difference between the me, but it turned out to be so random ists. That was then called political caricature, and so easy. Of course, Bogdan Kršić but in fact was a kind of general, universal beautiful and the ugly, was the head of the department.” caricature that only applied to certain situbetween tasteful and Petričić would later go on to be ations and certain characters in the society tasteless, between a lecturer in the same department, in which we lived. Everyone in the country good and evil but before that he would find emknew exactly who and what we were drawployment at daily Večernje Novosti, ing and there was no dilemma. We just didn’t a newspaper that then had a huge circulation and a reputadraw the character of the person we were talking about.” For Dušan Petričić those were years with a solid undertion as a progressive newspaper that was founded by famous journalist and translator Slobodan Glumac. When Novosti anstanding of morality and the system of values, and he explains that today: nounced a competition for a caricaturist, Petričić was called “Some say that I am conservative and outdated in my views, by Predrag Koraksić to apply; he was accepted and thus got but I grew up in a system of values where it was known what his first job. He already had the 1968 Pjer Award for the best appropriate human morality is. When you look at what is done caricature, which was a great recommendation for him. For today, what kind of behaviour there is in public life, what is Novosti he drew caricatures and illustrations for the Kekec unearthed to people across all media, I absolutely advocate for newspaper, which was published by the Borba house. Novosti NOVEMBER
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