10 Facts About Oto Bihalji-Merin

Oto Bihalji-Merin was a Serbian writer, art historian, painter and art critic.

Oto Bihalji-Merin returned to Belgrade in 1928 and became a pilot in the Royal Yugoslav Air Force.

Oto Bihalji-Merin authored dozens of books, mostly dealing with arts and mostly published in German.

Oto Bihalji-Merin kept a lifelong interest in expressionist art which had flourished in Germany in the interwar period of his youth before Nazis came to power and labelled it degenerate art.

Between 1949 and 1959 Oto Bihalji-Merin was editor of a state-owned illustrated arts magazine, Jugoslavija.

Oto Bihalji-Merin was a member of the international experts commission which organised the Fifty Years of Modern Art exhibition and is credited with securing unprecedented exposure for Yugoslav art at the 1958 World Fair in Brussels.

Oto Bihalji-Merin wrote fiction, including a 1947 novel titled Goodbye in October based on his World War II experiences as a prisoner of war, which was then adapted into a 1950 Yugoslav feature film titled The Red Flower, starring Dragomir Felba and Milivoje Zivanovic.

Oto Bihalji-Merin published plays, travel writing and a memoir of his time in the Spanish Civil War, titled Spain Between Death and Birth.

Late in his life Oto Bihalji-Merin started writing his autobiography, titled My Beautiful Life in Hell but did not manage to finish it by the time of his death in December 1993 at 89 years of age.

Oto Bihalji-Merin is the grand-uncle of a Serbian animal rights activist and a far-right ultranationalist politician, Pavle Bihali.