Adzic Nedeljko and the “Divina proportione"

I met Adzic in Vinci twenty-three years ago, in 1997, when he was present at the "Idea Leonardo da Vinci Museum" with his models, which I found both remarkable and interesting.

I remember, on the green lawn of the”Piazza del Cavallo, the impressiveness of his great “Ycocedron abscises vacuous", with its 32 sides, which I considered to be the “polyhedron of harmony”, 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons, composed of 180 equal elements. And the mechanical-architectural prospective wheel of the “Mazzochio" hung in the “Galleria della Conscience”. And the “Duodocedron abscisus elevatus solidus", composed of 32 pyramids, 12 pentagons and 20 triangles, that André Chastel defined a “symbol of the universe”.Therefore, I decided to include them in the itinerary of the Museum and exhibit them in other countries, from Strasbourg to Athens.

Adzic Nedeljko’s origins lie in the city of Novi Sad in Serbia. I found and presented his projects at the Mathematics Festival, held in Belgrade in 2013, organised by the "Center for the Promotion of Science".
 

The cycle of works that he had begun, with the interpretation of the “Divina proportion” by Luca Pacioli and Leonardo, inspired a series of reflections on his particular 'Leonardism’.
Leonardo da Vinci was not only an incomparable artist-scientist, but even an inventor and artisan-designer, with the extremely original character of a ‘giano of the arts’, with multiple texts, visions, experiences and horizons. Referral to Leonardo does not imply a simile or equivalence, rather a methodic and conceptual inspiration, an intention to converse with the past, in order to create in the present and plan an aesthetic future.

Contrarily to the theories of the “death of art” in the twentieth century, each work is contemporary, and, as De Dominicis and Bill Viola underlined, ‘timeless, universal and eternal’.
Art forms are countless, a univocal definition does not exist, neither do exclusive or privileged aesthetic parameters, or a theoric or technical limitation. Art is not imitation, but it can be reinvention, or the rediscovery of beauty, redesign or interpretation, as in the case of Azic, ‘art/giano and artist. For him it represents a vital expression of freedom, and at the same time, of strictness in the search of the exact form. Intention is not sufficient in the production of art: ideas are not enough, skill and quality of execution is also necessary.

A work of art can be as tiny as a miniature or a microcosmic model, or a gigantic primary ‘Minimal Art’ form. The polyhedrons of the “Divina proportione” do not have the limits of a dimensional scale. They can be crystalized in a statuesque jewel or in a macrostructure; they are geometric abstractions, synthesis of art-scienze, fruit of research between harmony and perfection.

They are born in the platonic solids, from Paolo Ucello and Piero della Francesca, from the marquetry of Friar Giovanni da Veronaand those of the Duke of Urbino.
In modern and contemporary times, Adzic is not the only one to have interpreted them, if one thinks of great artistic and architectural protagonists, for example Fuller’s geometric domes, or of Dahli's ’50 secrets of magic handicraft, or of Sol Lewitt and Paladino, and finally Wei Wei.

The work of this Serbian artist is largely characterized by the purism of his ’Techne’. An emblematic harmony and aura is found in the polyhedrons; the single objects are elements of marvel; the installations can have didactic functions or those of musical scenography, in the poetics of light and shade, fullness and emptiness.

Adzic does not neglect other subjects, but aims to distinguish himself from the proliferation of “Leonardo’s machines”, in excess of amateurism, improper and equivocal virtuosities that betray the genius of Leonarian designs. For example, the false design of the bicycle, which certainly does not belong to Vinci, assumes the provocateur character of a Dadaist iconoclasm.

One of Pacioli’s definitions explains why the Serbian artist was thunderstruck by Leonardo’s polyhedrons. “Divina proporzione”, a work necessary to all those of perspicacious and inquisitive intelligence. Where each scholar of Philosophy, Prospective Painting and Sculpture: Architecture, Music and other Mathematics: suave, subtle, and admirable doctrine attains (et delecterassi con varie questione de segretissima scienti”).

It is in the “Divina proportion” that Adzic has achieved his dream of making the fantastic figures of the Genius tangible and concrete.

Alessandro Vezzosi
Director of the “Leonardismi Archives" and the “Museo Ideale Leonardo da Vinci

1. Stellated Tetrahedron solid, 2013 Wood sculpture 58 cm., price $600

2. Stellated Hexahedron solid, 2020 Wood sculpture 72,4 cm., Price $1000

3. Stellated Octahedron solid, 2020 Wood sculpture 69,2 cm., Price $1000

4. Truncated Octahedron vacum, 2020 Wood sculpture 126 cm., Price $1500

5. Icosahedron solid, 2020 Wood sculpture 76 cm., Price $1200

6. Icosidodecahedron solid, 2020 Wood sculpture 129 cm., Price $2500

7. Icosidodecahedron vacum, 2020 Wood sculpture 129 cm., Price $2500

8. Truncated Icosahedron vacum, 2020 Wood sculpture 147 cm., Price $4000

9. Stellated Rhombicuboctahedron solid, 2020 Wood sculpture 114,8 cm., Price $3000

10. Septuagint solid, 2020 Wood sculpture 152 cm., Price $4000

11. Stellated Icosidodecahedron solid, 2020 Wood sculpture 156 cm., Price $4000

12. Pentagonal Pyramid solid, 2020 Wood sculpture 36x62 cm., Price $500

13. Stellated Cuboctahedron solid, 2013 Wood sculpture sise Ø92 cm., price $1000

14. Dodecahedron solid, 2013 Wood sculpture Ø82,5 cm., price $

15. Icosahedron vacum, 2013 Wood sculpture Ø76 cm., price $1500

16. Stellated Icosahedron solid, 2013 Wood sculpture Ø92 cm., price $2000

17. Stellated Icosidodecahedron vacum, 2013 Wood sculpture Ø186 cm., Price $3500

18. Truncated Icosahedron solid, 2013 Wood sculpture Ø143 cm ., price $3000

19.  Bicycle symbol of freedom, 2010 Wood sculpture 172 x 86 x 36 cm., price $2000
 

20. Gru, 2019 Wood sculpture 106 x 65 x 70 cm., price $2500

21. Mazzocchio, 2018 Wood sculpture Ø152 x 36 cm., price $10000

22. Invention of the press, 2017 Wood sculpture 172 x 120 x 56 cm., price $ 3000

23. Cordatrice, 2020 Wood sculpture 73 x 58,5 x 28 cm., price $ 5000

24. Orologgio, 2019 Wood sculpture 68 x 60 x 65 cm., price $2000