Encounter with Ex-Yugoslavia

Surrounded by a park, with a view of the rivers and the historical core of the City, the Museum is by itself a masterpiece of the 20th century architecture, and inside its marveling gallery space, you will certainly have a unique encounter with the representative works of the Yugoslav and Serbian contemporary arts.

Yugoslavia was disintegrated under dramatic circumstances twenty-five years ago, but its artistic heritage has remained and has survived. The Museum of Contemporary Art founded in Socialist Yugoslavia, used to be one of the leading institutions of this kind in a big country. During the decades, the museum has made a world-class selection of the works of the authors from Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Serbia, etc. It is exactly this representative feature of the collection that its greatest value lies in.

A walk through 18 “constellations of stars”

We spoke with the author of the new exhibition setting, Dejan Sretenović, Ph.D., who answered our question what his greatest challenges in his work were, as follows: “I wanted us to reaffirm our collection that had been unavailable for the public for a full decade. The exhibition provides a new view, but certainly not the last word, either. We have given up on the idea to have a permanent setting and have provided the audience with a chronological narrative. Each of the eighteen time sequences in total is grouped around the chronological axis that follows the historical development of art in Yugoslavia and in Serbia in a period longer than one century.”

Sequences 1 and 2

The choice of about the three hundred works exhibited in the five gallery levels is carefully devised. The first “sequence” and the first painting you will come across is the strong “A Funeral at Sićevo”, by Nadežda Petrović, a heroine of the First World War and the “woman originator” of the movement of civic modernism. It is interesting that the painting was made in 1905 at the first Yugoslav art colony at the village of Sićevo, which exists today as well. Social and engaged political art is represented by the works of the Zagreb group Earth and the Belgrade group Life.

Abstract painting and Zenitism

In the third “sequence”, you will see some of the first examples of abstract painting. “The Fight of the Day and the Night” (1921) by Jovan Bijelić and “The Composition” (1924) by Ivan Radović attract one’s attention by their geometrical shapes and colors. These are quite new motifs – appearing in the early 1920s, substantially later in comparison with the European trends. An encounter with the works of the literary-artistic vanguard group gathered around the Zenit magazine, whose initiator and mastermind was Ljubomir Micić, is also inspiring.

Slovenian constructivism and Belgrade’s surrealism

In the fifth “sequence”, pay attention to a Slovenian artist, Avgust Černigoj – “The EL Object” (1924/1979). In Ljubljana in 1924, he organized the first exhibition of constructivism, which was a true political provocation. He exhibited socialist catchphrases in a topsy-turvy manner, and destroyed parts of machines and workmen’s clothes before the public. The original “Marko Ristić’s Surrealistic Wall” – a unique “installation” created by arranging the works of art and artistic photographs – will make you gain a special experience.

Get familiar with Gvozden and fantastic landscapes

Mića Popović also belongs to the legends of Serbian painting. His imaginary hero – named Gvozden – is a migrant worker of the 1960s, when people went in quite large numbers to work in Western Germany. He paints him in various situations, but in each Gvozden seems to be lost, like a man who has been unsuccessful on his way towards a better life. Don’t miss absorbing the magical energy of the painting “The Fantastic Landscape”, painted by celebrated Montenegrin painter Petar Lubarda…

Performances, photographs, installations…

As you are climbing towards each new gallery level, the means of the artistic expression are becoming obviously different. There, you can see the early works of Marina Abramović – a world famous woman artist; Šijan’s “The Suicide of the Media”; a series of the photographs shot in a photobooth – an urban chronicle of its own kind of Saša Marković Mikrob – the icon of the Belgrade underground scene; Goranka Matić’s photographs from the time of the deep grief for the deceased President Josip Broz Tito. The art of the 1990s that conjures up the gloomy time of the disintegration of the country through the work of the Škart group. There are also Vesna Pavlović’s photographs reflecting the guests of the Belgrade Hyatt Hotel in 1999, who are enjoying in a luxury ambience, while bombs are falling heavily on Belgrade…

Museum is a gentle institution

At the beginning of the 1970s, the Museum was designed by a famous tandem of architects – Ivan Antić and Ivanka Raspopović. The building was finished in 1965, and in that very same year, the designers received the prestigious October Award of the City of Belgrade for Architecture. In an interview, Ivan Antić said that he had envisaged the building as a honeycomb, or subconsciously, due to the vicinity of the river, as some pile-dwelling on six trees. Architect Dejan Todorović, who worked on the reconstruction of the edifice, frequently spoke in public that he was admiring this perfect, visionary project with a system of the galleries that blend one into another, which provides visitors with a special feeling of “a lack of restraints”. This special feeling the audience has while observing the exhibits from different angles may arise from the attitude expressed by Ivan Antić, who considered that the “museum is a gentle institution”.

Milena Mihaljčić

Photos by:  MSUB’s Archive