EXHIBITION OF GRAPHICS CREATED IN THE GRAPHIC WORKSHOP IN SIĆEVO 2022-2024, PAVILION IN THE FORTRESS

May 27 – June 22, 2025

For several years now, the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Arts Niš, as a highly professional institution in Serbia, has been organizing the Graphic Workshop in the beautiful village of Sićevo near Niš.

Initiatives to equip the graphic workshop began in 2003 at the suggestion of Slobodan Radojković, then a master of graphics employed at the Gallery. One of the rooms within the building of the Art Colony “Sićevo” was converted into a graphic workshop, when a gravure printing press was purchased.

In 2005, the Gallery of Contemporary Art celebrated the centenary of the first gathering of artists in the Art Colony in Sićevo. Soon after, all the basic funds and necessary materials for work were secured, thus creating the conditions for the first gathering of four artists in September 2006. There are multiple reasons why the Gallery decided to establish a graphic workshop. First of all, it was noted that there were only two workshops of a similar nature in Serbia: in Smederevo (Graphic Studio of the Cultural Center) and Belgrade (Centre for Graphics and Visual Research “Academy”). The Centre for Graphics and Visual Research “Academy” at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade organizes a graphic workshop whose work is focused on the preservation and popularization of graphics, as well as monitoring the development of the medium itself. It was a role model, or one could say a model, for the creation of the Sićevo workshop. Also, in Niš there is an active association of artists “Niš Graphic Circle”, which contributed and gave full support to the initiative itself. One of the important reasons is certainly the awareness that the workshop will constantly contribute to the addition of the collection of graphics within the fund of the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Arts. It has been noticed that an increasing number of artists are committed to this medium, and that in addition to old graphic techniques they apply new, computer technologies, and that their understanding of graphics as a medium is much more flexible and modern.

Therefore, through the work program, the Graphic Workshop is focused, first of all, on the preservation of graphic art, but also on monitoring new tendencies of graphic print today. By popularizing this widely represented medium, the Gallery has already traditionally gathered significant names from the international artistic scene, but also follows the maturation of young authors from the graphic world. For the first three years, the Workshop was held twice a year (spring-autumn) for seven days, and since 2011 only at the end of spring.

The Graphic Workshop “Sićevo” gained an international character in 2008. So far, 90 artists from Niš, Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, Poland, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, USA, Mexico, Canada, Italy have created and left their works for the collection of the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Arts in the Graphic Workshop.

According to the workshop’s statute and propositions, each participant of the Workshop leaves two gallery-format graphics in a circulation of five prints to the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Arts, and in return, the Gallery provides the artists with all the basic means for work, as well as accommodation, food and travel expenses. In addition to working on matrices, printing graphics in the studio, exchanging experiences, and demonstrating certain techniques, excursions were also organized so that participants could get to know the surroundings and sights of Niš better. A tour of the Sićevo Gorge, a large number of monasteries located in the immediate vicinity, as well as other cultural and historical buildings of Niš from different periods, certainly completes the artists’ picture of the rich past of our city.
The collection of the Graphic Workshop now includes about 200 graphic sheets. Each of the artists who participated in the work of the Graphic Workshop “Sićevo” created graphics in the spirit of their already formed artistic expression. The variety of graphic techniques is another segment of the rich palette of graphic sheets from the Gallery’s collection. Many of them were influenced by the natural beauty of the Sićevo Gorge itself, so they permanently recorded their impressions of the environment through their works (Biljana Vuković, Snezana Marinković, Vladimir Vlajić, Marta Božik, Branko Nikolov, Ivana Stanković, Zoran Kostić, Michel Barzen, Bojan Živić), others found inspiration in some details of the surroundings (Velizar Krstić, Jelena Sredanović, Ljubiša Brković, Magda Krolikovska, April Wilmer, Roberto Gianinetti, Ranka Lučić Janković, Veliko Maričevski, Marija Sibinović).

Works from the graphic workshop “Sićevo” were exhibited in Niš, Prokuplje, Leskovac, Valjevo, Pirot, Sofia, Kotor, Dimitrovgrad. The good reputation of the Graphic Workshop “Sićevo” is getting louder every year and we believe in the future of this event. The support of the cultural public, colleagues, and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia give us hope that we are on the right track.

We must add that in 2020, a screen printing press with all the accompanying elements was provided in order to expand the activities of the colony participants and enable work in other graphic disciplines. With the purchase of a new press, the studio and graphic workshop premises were further renovated with an expanded and adapted space in the building of the art colony in Sićevo, so that decent conditions were created for work on both presses.