Nikola Aleksić

Nikola Aleksić (1808–1873) was a Serbian painter active in the Banat and Vojvodina region during the first half of the nineteenth century. He is considered the most productive Serbian painter of that period, and his work combines neoclassical portraiture with religious painting, including iconostases and frescoes, making him a key figure for understanding Serbian art of the time.

Born into a family of artists in Stari Bečej, he trained with Arsenije Teodorović in Novi Sad until 1826 and then studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna from 1828 to 1830. He went on to Italy, where for about three years he came into contact with the Nazarene movement, earned a living from portraits, and copied old masters in the city's galleries. After returning to Novi Sad and spending time in Sremski Karlovci, he went back to his childhood region and settled in Kikinda in 1837, where he opened his own studio. He then moved to Timișoara and finally to Arad, where relatives lived and where he spent the rest of his life.

His religious output was very large: he is credited with roughly a thousand icons and numerous iconostases and frescoes in Serbian and Romanian churches of the Banat, including those at Mol, Fibiş, Banatsko Aranđelovo, Kovin and Arad, with works dated from 1837 to 1871. His neoclassical portraits, such as those held in the Matica Srpska collection in Novi Sad, show his command of the craft.

His apprentices Novak Radonić and Aksentije Marodić became painters in their own right, and his son Dušan and grandsons Stevan and Ivan also achieved prominence, continuing the family tradition.