Exhibition, Nedeljko Gvozdenović:
On a Quest for Absolute Painting

The exhibition of paintings, Nedeljko Gvozdenović: On a Quest for Absolute Painting, opened at the SASA Gallery on July 4. The occasion is the marking of the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the SASA Gallery as well as reviving the memory of painter Nedeljko Gvozdenović, the initiator of the establishment of the Gallery, who died thirty years ago. Members of the audience were addressed by SASA Gallery Director Dušan Otašević, Serbian Minister of Culture and Information Vladan Vukosavljević, and Dijana Metlić, PhD, the author of the exhibition and the Catalogue. SASA President, Academician Vladimir S. Kostić, opened the exhibition.

“It is quite deliberately that we are marking the 50th anniversary of the Gallery with an exhibition of works by Academician Nedeljko Gvozdenović, who was appointed head of the newly established Art Council of the Gallery in November of 1967. His closest associates from these pioneer days remember him as an uncompromising authority on professional matters, but also as a discreet and prudent person,” said Academician Vladimir S. Kostić.

As Nedeljko Gvozdenović had no retrospective exhibitions of his work in Belgrade since 1970, the time has come to present his oeuvre to the public at large, particularly to the younger generations, which have not had the opportunity of acquainting themselves with his art.

Gvozdenović was one of the most important Yugoslav and Serbian visual artists of the 20th century, whose work left a strong mark on the cultural life in Belgrade in the period from the year 1929, when he had his work displayed for the first time, at the Second Autumn Exhibition of Belgrade Artists in the Art Pavilion at Mali Kalemegdan, to his death in 1988. As a professor at the University of Belgrade and as an academician and founder of the SASA Gallery, Gvozdenović shaped several generations of Serbian postwar artists. With the bequest of his works to the SASA Gallery and the City of Belgrade, he affirmed his awareness of the importance of art in the education and cultural awakening of new generations