Dragan Malesevic Tapi was born in Belgrade in 1949. In his early youth, he started painting as an autodidact. His painting career began when he was seven years old, in the lobby of the building located at 4 Hilandarska street in Belgrade. He copied the comic ``Three Imps``, which his father, a journalist, used to bring him from the ``Politika`` press, before the comic would appear in newsstands. Tickets for his first independent ``exhibition``, which took place at the entrance of his house building, cost five dinars for children and ten dinars for adults. In 1985 his works, together with the works of Mica Popovic and Olja Ivanjicki, were shown in public, at a group exhibition in Rovinj, where he continued to exhibit his works for the next five years.
The crucial moment for his painting career was the sale of some of his first paintings in the Prijeko Gallery - Dubrovnik in 1987. Tapi's first painting was sold to a German tourist for 8,000 Deutschmarks, although the artist at first asked 50,000 dollars for it. From that point forward, he aligned his life with his talent. After only two years, the magazine ``Art News`` would include him among the seven best hyperrealists in the world.[1]
In the 80's and 90's of last century his paintings engrossed great media attention,[2] and that was followed by numerous independent and group exhibitions across his homeland and abroad: United States, Cuba, Belgium, France, United Kingdom, Germany, Switzerland, Greece,Cyprus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Russia, China, Japan… Tapi's paintings are in numerous private collections, like the one of former president and state secretary of the United States George H.W. Bush and Henry Kissinger, departed Prime minister of JapanKakuei Tanaka, and many other public figures across the world, but also in public collections, including the White House collection.[3] In 2000 the U.S. state of Georgia proclaimed Dragan Malesevic Tapi as an Honorary Georgia Citizen. Unfortunately for the world of painting and admirers of fine arts, the sudden and early death of the artist in 2002 prevented him from exhibiting already arranged exhibitions in museums and galleries such as the Peggy Guggenheim Museum.
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