PAINTERS / WARRIORS / WITNESSES

PAINTING AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN SERBIA 1914 – 1918

FEB.1 – APRIL 2, 2017

Showcased as part of the exhibition project Painters / Warriors / Witnesses are over a hundred paintings produced by official war painters, about the same number of photographs taken by official photographers of the Serbian army, war correspondents and amateurs, as well as by women painters, who were volunteer nurses, together with works by other artists who participated in the war either as regular soldiers or volunteers.

This exhibition aptly presents the multifarious and dynamic art scene in Serbia in the early 20th century, built on a contradiction: art began to flourish amid a war cataclysm, reaching the pinnacle of an artistic style in exile, i.e. Serbian Impressionism.

Works from the following museum and archival collections are on display: Museum of Contemporary Art, Military Museum, Museum of the City of Belgrade, National Museum in Smederevska Palanka, Institute for the Protection of Monuments of Culture of the City of Belgrade, National Library of Serbia, Library of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Svetozar Marković University Library, Gallery of Matica Srpska in Novi Sad, National Museum in Šabac, and National Museum in Belgrade, with the noteworthy participation of the Imperial War Museum, London, and the Milwaukee Art Museum.

The exhibition includes works by Nadežda Petrović, Kosta Miličević, Mališa Glišić, Milan Milovanović, Miloš Golubović, Vladimir Becić, Vasa Eškićević, Vasa Pomorišac, Paško Vučetić, Živorad Nastasijević, Natalija Cvetković, Mihailo Milovanović, Veljko Stanojević, Dragomir Glišić, et al. There are also photographs taken by Vladimir Becić, Miloje Igrutinović, Rista Šuković, Rista Marjanović, Stanislav Krakov, Đorđe Stanojević, Andra Popović, Dragoljub Pavlović, Jovan Lovčević, as well as those taken by the following foreign photographers: Catharina Sturzenegger, Archibald Reiss, Sampson Tchérnoff, Ariel Vergis, and André Taponier. Some of them were also both painters and photographers.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue in several languages, containing studies in Serbian, English, French and Russian. In addition to the general, contextually conceived, text in the catalogue, a broader context of artistic events is provided by articles on the history of photography, Serbian wartime literature, and a historiographical text on Serbian refugees during World War I. Particularly valuable is the section of the catalogue containing, often fictionalized, distressing biographies of war painters and photographers.

Organizers of the exhibition: Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade

Author of the entire project: Žana Gvozdenović

Author of the war photography section: Milena Marjanović

Design: Nenad Marković

NUMBER OF VISITORS: 30.099
 

VIRTUAL TOUR

EXHIBITION RECORDING