The central theme of this feature-documentary film is a question related to the life and work of Petar Lubarda, one of our most eminent Serbian and Yugoslav painters of the twentieth century. How did this painter, who represented the highest reaches of post-war art in socialist Yugoslavia, acquire the status of state artist, while his biography emphasizes the romantic archetype of the haunted painter, pentre maudit, behind whom are misfortune, illness, fate and death?