Miodrag B. Protić

Miodrag B. Protić (Serbian Cyrillic: Миодраг Б. Протић; 10 May 1922 – 20 December 2014) was a Serbian painter, art critic, theorist and historian of art of the 20th century.

Miodrag B. Protić was born in Vrnjačka Banja, on 10 May 1922. He finished elementary school in Vrnjačka Banja and high school in Kruševac. He graduated from University of Belgrade Faculty of Law in 1950. He studied art in Art School of Mladen Josić in 1943–1944 under Jovan Bijelić and Zora Petrović. Protić gained further education in Paris 1953–1954, in Italy and the United States in 1963. From 1950 to 1959 he worked in the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture when he initiated the establishment of Modern Art Gallery in Belgrade, purchasing artwork from exhibitions and artist studios. He was appointed director of the Modern Art Gallery in 1959. On 20 October 1965, the Modern Art Gallery became the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade. Protić, as its founder, continued as its head until he retired in 1980. He began exhibiting in 1946 in numerous group exhibitions at home and abroad. His first solo exhibition was in 1956. He was a member of ULUS from 1948. He was a member of artistic groups "The Independent" (1951–1955) and "The December Group" (1955–1960). Beginning in 1952 he published a number of books, papers, essays, and critiques on Serbian and Yugoslav art. He was a regular art critic for "NIN" between 1952 and 1958. He commentated for numerous newspapers and magazines, including "Glas", "Rad", "Politika", "Borba", "Danas", "Delo", "Savremenik", "Književnost", "Letopis Matice srpske", "Književne novine", and "Umetnost". He was a member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb from 1966 to 1991. He died on 20 December 2014 in Belgrade