JULY 4 – AUGUST 5, 2018
Author: Dijana Metlić, PhD
The exhibition of works by Nedeljko Gvozdenović will be on display at the SASA Gallery in July and August of 2018. 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.
As Nedeljko Gvozdenović had no retrospective exhibitions of his work 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 Gvozdenović’s 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, the Heritage House, and the Museum of the City of Belgrade, he affirmed his awareness of the importance of art in the education and cultural awakening of new generations.
The works on display come from various stages of his creative life: the prewar period (1929-1945), when he produced most of his intimist pieces in the so-called “lightweight” techniques (gouache, drawing, tempera, watercolor), and the postwar period of associative and semi-abstract works (1950-1986), when, according to experts and critics, who are unanimous in their judgment, Gvozdenović’s most important oil paintings were produced (still lifes, landscapes and interiors), ranked among the top works od Serbian art of the latter half of the 20th century. Yje exhibition will feature around 100 masterpieces from the SASA Collection, which the artist donated to this institution in the 1970s, and works from the collection of the City of Belgrade, now kept by SASA. Gvozdenović was elected as a corresponding member of SASA in 1963 and as a full member in 1970.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue containing a summary in Serbian in English, a short biography, a list of exhibitions, a selected bibliography, and a substantial section comprising reproductions.
The author of the project is art historian Dijana Metlić, PhD, Associate Professor at the Art Academy in Novi Sad.
NUMBER OF VISITORS: 15.965
EXHIBITION RECORDING
