Andrej Tisma was born in 1952 in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1976. He has had solo exhibitions since 1972 (Novi Sad, Belgrade, New York, Milan, Seoul, Munich, Naples, San Francisco, London, Budapest, Tokyo, Bremen), and since 1969 has taken part in some 600 collective exhibitions in Yugoslavia and about 40 other countries.
Tisma is concerned with concrete poetry, mail art, rubber stamp art, photography, performance art, electrography, video art, web art, and music. He has been involved with the international mail art movement since 1973 and has organized about ten international mail art projects in Yugoslavia and Canada. He is the author of two mail art monographs: “Private Life” (1986) and “Nature Gives...” (1992), and the fax art monograph “FAX HeART” (1995). Two books on his visual works have been published: “Alter – Alternative Works 1972-1982” and “Vrsac” (1987), as well as “Andrej Tisma” (San Francisco, 1996) a collection of his rubber-stamp art, articles, and essays on art. He is the founder of The Institute for the Spreading of Love (1991) and of the "Ljubav/Love" magazine. In 1991 he was a guest lecturer at the Institut des Hautes Etudes en Arts Plastiques in Paris. In 1992 Tisma started the "Embargo Art" campaign and organized the "Anti-embargo Congress" of artists in Sremski Karlovci, Serbia. He created the website “Spirit Art”, a guide to the past, present and future of the nonmaterial, mental and spiritual art (with Arleen Hartman) in 2005.
Since 1996 Tisma has been working in the field of digital graphics, and since 1997 in the field of web art. His web art works are included in the Net Art Idea Line, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, USA; Rhizome Artbase, USA; Net Art Guide, Stuttgart, Germany; the Net Art Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Ireland; and Media Practice Collection, Museum of Contemporary art of Vojvodina, Novi Sad. He took partin the Ars Electronica festival, Linz, Austria.
He is a member of the Association of Fine Artists of Serbia (section for expanded media); the International Association of Art Critics; the Association of Applied Art Artists and Designers of Vojvodina (section for theory); and the International Writers and Artists Association, Bluffton, USA.
Tisma has published art criticism and essays since 1976 in numerous newspapers and magazines, and has given talks on radio and TV (over 1,600 bibliographic units) in Yugoslavia and abroad (France, USA, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Brazil). From 1981 till 2008 worked as an art critic for the Novi Sad "Dnevnik" daily newspaper. Since 2011 works as an editor for digital arts in Cultural Center of Novi Sad. He has published a book of art criticism and essays “Druge te(rit)orije” (Other Territories), Sremski Karlovci (1992), a collection of his articles on art "Andrej Tisma" in San Francisco (1996), a monograph “Sublime Objects – Examples of Fine Art in Yugoslavia at the End of 20th Century”, Novi Sad (2002) and “Interfaces Of Limitless – Digital And Internet Art At The Turn Of Millenia”, Novi Sad, (2008).
Tisma has curated several exhibitions of contemporary art including: "Alternative NS83", 1983, Novi Sad; "Art and Ethics", 1988, Sombor and Novi Sad; "Sublime Objects", 2003, Novi Sad; "Outdoors - International Digital Art Show", 2004, Novi Sad; and from 1984 to 1999 about twenty international mail art and telefax art shows countrywide in the former Yugoslavia and in Calgary. He was co-curator of “October Salon”, Belgrade, 1996 and curator of "Critics Have Chosen", Belgrade, 1998.
Awards:
1995 International Writers and Artists Association Award, Bluffton, USA
1995 Center for Visual Culture "Golden Eye" Annual Award, Novi Sad
1999 "Artmagazin" Annual Award, Novi Sad
2004 "Golden Mortar" Annual Award, "Podrum" Gallery, Novi Sad
2005 Center for Visual Culture "Golden Eye" Annual Award, Novi Sad
2007 “Planet Earth” Annual Award, Novi Sad
2010 “The Clear Brooks Family” Annual Award, Belgrade
Under the pen-name Andrej Zivor he has been publishing poetry and prose since 1976, and since 1980 he published thirteen books in Yugoslavia, USA and France. He has been a member of the Writers Association of Vojvodina since 1981.
Published books of poetry include: "Dokument" (Document), Matica srpska, Novi Sad, 1980; "Ponasanje" (Behaviour), Strazilovo, Novi Sad, 1981; "Reklamni panoi" (Billboards), Matica srpska, Novi Sad, 1983; "Brondogvas", Razvigor, Uzicka Pozega, 1987; "Quadro de avisos", International Writers and Artists Association, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 1988; "Billboard Poems", University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA, 1988; "Panneaux pubricitaires", La Page et la Plume, Paris, France, 1994; "Apaurin", Zajednica knjizevnika Panceva, Pancevo, 1996; "Svi u prirodu" (Let's Go To Nature), Prosveta, Beograd, 1999; and "Reklame besmrtnosti" (Advertizing Immortality), Orpheus, Novi Sad, 2006.
Published books of prose include: "10", Knjizevna zajednica Novog Sada, Novi Sad, 1982, and "Za laku noc" (Good Night), Knjizevna zajednica Novog Sada, Novi Sad, 1989. He edited the anthology "Pitanje zvota - ekologija u poeziji savremenih novosadskih pesnika" (Question of Life - ecology in contemporary poetry of Novi Sad) (with D. Matovic), Gradska biblioteka, Novi Sad, 1994.
Andrej Tisma lives in Novi Sad, Serbia.
Address: Modene 1, 21000 Novi Sad, Serbia
Homepage: http://atisma.com/
Spirit Art: http://www.atisma.com/spiritart/
As we continue our Art issue into February this year, we feature well-known artists from various places on earth, to examine Art in a new way. In this special feature, SIM speaks directly with Andrej Tisma in Novi Sad. Andrej speaks brilliantly on the subject of art throughout various paradigms, and explains how it has helped shape the thinking patterns and social structures of societies throughout time. This feature is sure to leave you thinking in new ways, realizing the underlying value and meaning of self-expression through the arts. 
