Exhibition ‘Nikola Dobrović – Under the Flags of Modern Movements’

The exhibition ‘Nikola Dobrović – Under the Flags of Modern Movements’, authored by Professor Marta Vukotić Lazar, PhD, and Bojan Kovačević, MSc, is to open at the SASA Gallery, on Tuesday, 24 May, at 7 p.m., and it represents this eminent SASA member as an open-minded person, an intellectual through and through, the author of numerous critical historiographical studies on architecture and cities, university professor, director of the Urban Planning Institute of Belgrade, the first architect of the city of Belgrade, and virtually a mythological figure of our architecture and cultural public.

The exhibition takes a central place in the programme marking the 125thanniversary of the birth of architect Nikola Dobrović. In addition to it, a series of events has been envisioned in the organization of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA) with the participation of the Faculty of Architecture and the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Belgrade, as well as the Union of Architects of Serbia, Belgrade International Week of Architecture, Academy of Architecture of Serbia and Belgrade Cultural Centre.

The exhibition is conceived as a synthesis of the entire Dobrović’s work and, on the one side, aims to present key features of Dobrović’s work, his ideas, endeavours and achieved results, and on the other side, to showcase the milieu, circumstances, conditions and situation in which the works were created. The complete documentation is organized in two interconnected corpora. One is related to Dobrović’s authorship, i.e. his work and activities, whereas the other one concentrates on the accompanying events, conditions and circumstances in which the works in question were created. In the blend of these two parts, the exhibition first showcases the most representative works, and then through the periodization and numerous testimonies, we discover the nature and scale of his overall creative exploits. Nikola Dobrović, as an extremely steadfast and knowledgeable person, is a symbol of individuality and ethics, worthy of the highest respect and lasting memory in the territory of Serbia, the region, as well as in Europe.

The exhibition will feature numerous projects, personal items, archive records, works of art and documentaries stored at the SASA Archives and SASA Library, the Museum of Science and Technology – Belgrade, the National Museum in Belgrade, the Heritage House, Film News and many other private collections.

The exhibition was endorsed by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia, Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia and ‘Ewe Comp d.o.o.’