Originally from Banjaluka in Bosnia, Amer Kobaslija (b. 1975) fled his war-ravaged homeland in 1993, and arrived in refugee camps in Nuremberg, Germany. Later, he traveled to Düsseldorf, where he attended the Kunst Akademie. In 1997, Kobaslija was offered asylum by the United States and immigrated to Jacksonville, Florida. He earned his BFA from Ringling College of Art and Design in 2003 and his MFA from Montclair State University in 2005. He was a member of the studio arts faculty at Bowdoin College from 2009 to 2011, and has been a professor of painting at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania since 2011. He divides his time between New York City, Gettysburg, Jacksonville, and Switzerland.
Kobaslija has had numerous solo exhibitions in Paris, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New Orleans. He is represented by George Adams Gallery in New York, where he has had seven solo shows over the preceding decade, including the 2015 survey exhibition. The exhibition is scheduled to travel to other venues in the United States in 2016.
In 2005, he was awarded a grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation; the following year, he received a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. In 2013, Kobaslija was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship. Kobaslija's works have been reviewed and printed in publications such as The New York Times, Art in America, ARTNews, Art & Antiques, New York Magazine, The Village Voice, New York Time Out, The New York Sun, The Florida Times-Union, and The San Francisco Chronicle.
A monograph on Kobaslija's work with essays by Michaël Amy, Edward M. Gómez, and Patterson Sims was published in 2015.
Image courtesy of Thomas Hager.