30. August 1942 – Serbian patriot and painter Sava Šumanović was killed by Croats

On this day, 30 August 1942. Serbian painter Sava Sumanovic was, together with 150 other Serbs, killed by Croats.

Sava Šumanović was born in Vinkovci on 22. January 1896. He graduated from High School in Zemun, across the Danube from Belgrade, where he was first introduced to the art of painting. He later enrolled in the College of Crafts and Arts in Zagreb then lived in Paris for several years, since 1920.

His professor in Paris was André Lhot, while Šumanović befriended Modigliani, Max Jacob and Serbian artists and writers such as Rastko Petrović. Absent from Paris (1924-1925), Šumanović returned at the French capital in late 1925, and stayed again for several years, accepting apparent influences of the Matisse painting style. Šumanović returned to Serbia and the town of Šid in 1928 and, after another year spent in Paris, settled eventually there in 1930.

Picture: Sava Šumanović (1896-1942), U sjenci ( In the Shadow), cca 1920s.

His major exhibition was held at the Belgrade University in 1939, where he exposed approx, 410 paintings mostly from the Šid period. It was his first major success after many years.
He lived quietly in Šid until the outbreak of World War II in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in April 1941, when the Independent State of Croatia started a large-scale genocide against Serbs already in 1941.

The Croatian police arrested Šumanović as a Serb hostage with other 150 Serbs and took them to the concentration camp in Sremska Mitrovica. Šumanović was ruthlessly executed on 30 August 1942 together with other Serbs and was buried in a common grave of local Serbian Orthodox graveyard.