Slobodan Saia-Levy (born 1944 in

Parma Parma (; ) is a city in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna known for its architecture, Giuseppe Verdi, music, art, prosciutto (ham), Parmesan, cheese and surrounding countryside. With a population of 198,986 inhabitants as of 2025, ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

– February 3, 1994), publicly known as his pseudonym Jorge Zontal, was a

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

artist.

Life

Zontal was born in Parma, Italy, in 1944, the son of Yugoslav refugees. He grew up in Caracas, Venezuela, and in 1968 he earned a degree in architecture at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he also studied film making and acting. Zontal died in Toronto on February 3, 1994, of

AIDS The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, pr ...

Work

Soon after graduation, he met Felix Partz and

AA Bronson AA Bronson (born Michael Tims in Vancouver in 1946) is an artist. He was a founding member of the artists' group General Idea, was president and director of Printed Matter, Inc., and started the NY Art Book Fair and the LA Art Book Fair. Ea ...

while working on a film in Toronto and their group,

General Idea General Idea was a collective of three Canadian artists, Felix Partz, Jorge Zontal and AA Bronson, who were active from 1967 to 1994. As pioneers of early conceptual and media-based art, their collaboration became a model for artist-initiated ...

, formed in 1969, soon became an active part of the Canadian and then the international art scene. They made plans for the ''Miss General Idea Pageant'' and the ''1984 Miss General Idea Pavilion'' as early as 1970. Their multi-disciplinary work partakes of parody and includes photographic elements. They sought publicity and theatre using as media, videos, scripts, artifacts and other forms of documentation to engage the art world and themselves.

References

1944 births 1994 deaths Canadian gay artists AIDS-related deaths in Canada Yugoslav emigrants to Canada Canadian mixed media artists Artists from Ontario Canadian contemporary artists 20th-century Canadian LGBTQ people 20th-century Canadian male artists {{Canada-artist-stub

Life

Work

Further reading

References