Mladen Lompar was a Montenegrin poet, essayist, and art critic. He graduated from Art History at the University of Belgrade. From 1984 to 1995 he was the director of the Art Museum of Montenegro in Cetinje. He was removed from his position after refusing to allow the museum to carry paintings stolen from the Croatian battlefield.
Lompar was commissioner of the Second and Third Cetinje Biennale and Vice President of the Doclean Academy of Sciences and Arts, a parable scholars’ academy created in 1998 by academics who found the Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts to be dominated by Serbian nationalism. Lompar was one of the founders of the Montenegrin Society of Independent Writers and the president of the Montenegrin PEN Centre.
The poetry of Mladen Lompar has been translated into many languages and has been presented in several anthologies of contemporary Montenegrin and regional poetry.
Lompar was one of the founders of the Literary Municipality of Cetinje publishing house and creator and editor-in-chief of ARS – Review of Culture, Art and Science during both the original and later series.
As his liberal political views, advocacy for national and civil rights, and promotion of avantgarde aesthetics were provocative to both the local communist regime and mentality of the small town of Cetinje, he was labelled by authorities, alongside his colleagues Milorad Popović and Slavko Perovic, as “politically inappropriate” during the 1980s and 1990s. Lompar contributed greatly to the creation of a core of resistance movements that later went on to form the political party Liberal Alliance of Montenegro (LSCG), as well as anti-war media and alternative cultural organizations.
