As a recipient of a government scholarship, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, Germany, until the beginning of the First World War. After voluntarily enlisting in the Serbian army, he was granted the status of an official military artist. He took part in the battles around Belgrade in 1914, and was part of the Serbian army's Great Retreat through the Prokletije mountains of Serbia, Montenegro, and Albania to the Greek island of Corfu during the winter of 1915.