Ljupco Samardziski was born in 1947 in Skoipje, Macedonia and graduated from the Academy of Music and Art in Belgrade in Ljubljana. He started his artistic career as a soloist on double-base and as a musician he performed in many countries. He played as a soloist as well as with a number of national orchestras in several famous concert halls such as the Beethoven Hll in Vienna, the Music Centre in Utrecht, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Carnegia Hall in New York among others. He has also recorded both his own compositions as well as those of world famous composers. He has also had a large number of compositions composed and dedicated to him by composers from all over the world.

As a painter Ljupco Samardziski has held exhibitions in a number of European galleries and his works can be found in numerous national and private collections in Europe and America including the Opera de la Bastille in Paris, the Sorbonne in Paris, Banque Credit Lyonnais, Paris, the Hyatt Group of Hotels and the Grimaldi family in Monaco, among others.

Angelica Grimaldi has called him a genius and “in his paintings we have to penetrate his abstracts and let ourselves be carried away in a fragile and ephemeral world – the world of dreams. “Surprise me!” Diaghilev said to Jean Cocteau. I say to Samardziski, a fascinating creator, “Surprise me!” To quote another art critic Jean Pierre Lehmans: “He marries music and pictures to create his own very personal symphonies. His masters are Van Hogh, Nicolas de Staël. Marcel Duchamp… he is a composer of colours and a painter of musical notes and an orchestra conductor of both who, at the same time knows how to make the chords of his instruments vibrate to touch the most profound chords in us.”

Ljupco Samardziski’s solo exhibition Lust of Colours of Life is open at Artitude Gallery, Tigné Street, Ta’Xbiex until 7 November. For further information call on 2131 6708, 9984 4653 or email [email protected].

How old are you? Star sign and date of birth?

60. Libra, born 4 October 1947.

What would you like to be doing in 10 years’ time?

Just what I have been doing in the last 45 years. Artist.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Harmony in everything.

What is your favourite occupation?

Painting.

Significant other?

Music.

What is your greatest fear?

Inability to look after yourself and to do what you like.

What is it that you most value in your friends?

Benevolence, truth, wit.

How would you like to die?

Sleeping with beautiful dreams.

What is your greatest extravagance?

Scarves and hats… But while

I am in Malta mostly

inapplicable.

What is your greatest regret?

Some memories of past happenings which I know now will not happen again.

What is your most treasured possession?

My family.

Which talent would you most like to have apart from the ones you already have?

To make a lot of money to fulfil my philanthropic interests.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

War, bombs, killing a lot of innocent people and after that to manage to go to sleep well and calmly.

Where would you like to live?

I already live in the place I like most – Sliema.

What is your most marked characteristic?

A fighter for justice.

Who are your heroes/heroines in real life?

I have a great deal of respect for talented and successful people, but I have no heroes.

What is it that you most dislike?

Injury.