Gradimir Smudja was born in Novi Sad in 1956. He is a Serbian cartoonist and painter who settled in Italy and France. He currently resides in Lucca, Tuscany, Italy. Smudja recently published an acclaimed comic "Le Cabaret des Muses" that tells the life story of the French master painter Toulouse-Lautrec. The comic is sold throughout Europe and has been published in French, Dutch, Spanish, Serbian, German, Hungarian, Italian and other languages. This was a continuation of the acclaimed comic “Vincent et Van Gogh,” the epic story about Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh and his cat.