The Artist About Himself

   The true events in a man's life occur within himself and are difficult to discuss. But I can only try. In terms of origins, my father was from the Bay of Kotor, and my mother from Dubrovnik.
My father Ivan Vuličević, the son of Antun Vuličević and Angelina Sbutega, taught me morality and non-violence.
My mother Ljubica Soletić, the daughter of Lujo Soletić and Amalia Juvančić, taught me to love.
As an officer's child, I was constantly moved from one place to another, and these changes characterized my childhood years. Today, when I ask myself where is my home, where is my native place, I cannot rid myself of the impression that it is everywhere where the seasons change in all their typical splendor.
Fruits trees in bloom, the golden dropping leaves of autumn, the whiteness of sad black houses with melting snow, formed my nature, the same as the Mediterranean that my ancestors embedded into my fate. Intensive enthusiasm and the awakening of an artistic consciousness occurred when I was sixteen, in 1943 in Banja Luka, where my family was then stationed.
The intensity of this first ecstasy was such that choosing painting as a career was unavoidable.
From 1943 to 1947, in a period when my entire community took pity on me, I lived a life of such intensity, which was later to be the bait for all my endeavors and the unattainable ideal of existence. Later compromises made with the world, and the beginning of my spiritual loss caused great admiration and relief in my surroundings. The battle to support myself, which faced me, as it does every person, hurt like a wound, as it sought imperatively the denial of everything that was most important to me. I had to wage this battle throughout my entire life, and with the remnants of my being, I committed myself to values. So truncated, I attempted with all might to achieve those things because of which life had meaning.
- As a man, I learned that goodness and love are the greatest human values.
- As an artist, I learned that art is not created by us, and that we have value only as mediums for the spirit of the life that flows through us.
To achieve this, we must be relaxed, open, revoking will, with no knowledge, no intentions, as free as possible. Art is a religious act, an act of freedom, an act of forgetting everything gained.