Zuko Džumhur

Zuko Džumhur (born; Zulfikar Džumhur; 24 September 1920 – 27 November 1989) was a Bosnian writer, painter and caricaturist. His bohemian nature, versatility of a polymath and extremely creative personality have made him a unique figure of the Yugoslav culture in the second half of the 20th century.

After death his house in Konjic was declared a museum, he was memorialised as a stamp.

Biography Džumhur was born in Konjic, Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina). When he was only two months old his father, the ulama Abduselam Džumhur (1885–1933) and mother Vasvija (née Tufo; 1900–1978), moved to the capital of Belgrade, where his father got a job as the main imam of the Royal Yugoslav Army. Zuko Džumhur finished elementary school and the first four grades of high school in Belgrade, then moved to Sarajevo where he finished high school in 1939. Džumhur attended classes at the Law Faculty at the University of Belgrade, but soon left and later finished his studies at the Belgrade Academy of Arts in Petar Dobrović's class. During World War II, Džumhur's younger brother was killed in 1945.

Džumhur published his first caricatures in an army magazine in 1947, and very soon became one of the most prominent illustrators in Yugoslavia, publishing his caricatures in the country's best selling newspapers and magazines, such as Politika,

Džumhur published his first book in 1959, a travelogue entitled Nekrolog jednoj čaršiji (Obituary of a Small Town). Considered his best work, Nekrolog is also particularly exemplary of Džumhur's style of travel writing as a whole. Moving freely, fluidly and often unexpectedly between the familiar and the remote, past and present, real and imagined, Džumhur's travelogues can be characterized by a certain mobility, fragmentariness and easy diversion. In the only preface he ever wrote, Ivo Andrić characterizes the writing in Nekrolog as similar to the illustrations with which Džumhur accompanies his text.

Džumhur died in Herceg Novi aged 69 in 1989. He was buried in Konjic, and his family home in that city was declared a museum.

Works

Nekrolog jednoj čaršiji (1958) (Obituary of a čaršija (the downtown/main street Ottoman-Turkish style bazaar)) (with an introduction by Ivo Andrić) Pisma iz Azije (1973) (Letters from Asia) Pisma iz Afrike i Evrope (Letters from Africa & Europe) Stogodišnje priče (Centennial tales) Putovanje bijelom Ladom (1982) (Voyage with white "Lada") Hodoljublja (1982, "TV Sarajevo") (Travelogue - a travel documentary with focus on culture, traditions, art and nature of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia and countries he sojourned, primarily Islamic and countries of Mediterranean Basin.) Adakale Zelena čoja Montenegra (Green carpet of Montenegro - co-authored with Momo Kapor)