On Thursday, August 29 at 8 p.m., the Officers’ Home opened the exhibition “100 out of 1,000 works from the collection of the Sićevo Art Colony” to mark 60 years of regular operation of the Colony.
The exhibition is conceptually designed to follow the chronological sequence of the Colony’s existence, illustrating its basic characteristics – Yugoslav and international character, openness to artists of different vocations and styles. The exhibition will be realized through two exhibitions, the first of which is based on works created until 1994, and the second exhibition (September 19 to October 10) includes works from the last thirty years. The author of the exhibition is Milica Todorović, museum advisor.
As the participants of the Sićevo Art Colony were protagonists and actors of numerous parallel existing movements and styles, the exhibition also provides insight into recent movements in art in our region from the 1960s to the present, i.e. from Informel and Tachism, oneiric and metaphysical painting, new figuration, various retro styles of the 1980s and postmodern tendencies, to a new understanding of classical painting and electronic painting, i.e. video.
The idea of our famous Serbian painter Nadežda Petrović about gathering artists in Sićevo, which was realized in 1905 within the First Yugoslav Art Colony, was renewed in 1964 at the initiative of the Society of Fine Artists of Niš, with the establishment of the Sićevo Art Colony. At the time of its establishment, the Sićevo Colony was the first art colony in the territory of central Serbia, and today it is a respectable and longest-running art manifestation of the city of Niš, highly respected in the art world.
The Sićevo Art Colony was initially Yugoslav in nature, and since 1982 it has officially acquired the character of an international manifestation, but inviting artists from abroad has become a regular practice since the early 1990s. A total of 545 artists have participated in the work of the Sićevo Colony so far, of which the largest number were artists from Serbia (285), Niš itself (80), the former Yugoslav republics (70), while 110 artists from many European countries and countries from other continents participated.
In line with the First Yugoslav Art Colony, whose prominent member was the sculptor Ivan Meštrović, the Art Colony Sićevo was open from its foundation not only to painters but also to sculptors and graphic artists, which distinguished it from the colonies of the time that were exclusively for painting (Ilok, Senta, Ečka, Počitelj) or sculpture (Portorož, Dečani, Prilep). Thanks to the Art Colony Sićevo, an impressive fund was formed, which currently has exactly 1000 works of art, of which 88 are kept in the National Museum in Niš and 912 in the collection of the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Arts, given that the Gallery has been managing all the work of implementing the Colony since its foundation (1970). The collection of the Art Colony “Sićevo” is a large, authentic and, due to its historical and artistic characteristics, extremely valuable collection of contemporary art.
Although the organizers of the Colony never conditioned or limited the artists in terms of their choice of themes and motifs, a large number of authors directly reacted to the environment in which they created with their work, whether they used the historical and cultural and artistic heritage of this region for their own inspiring mimesis or the natural environment itself, that is, the landscapes of the unique and unrepeatable Sićevo Gorge. Transposing the vital force of powerful nature into the language of visual elements was a challenge that many artists could not resist, approaching it in an inventive way while respecting personal artistic subjectivity.
The exhibition 100 out of 1000 works from the collection of the Sićevo Art Colony contains works by artists of a wide generational range, from Ivan Tabaković and Mihailo Petrov through the generation of Miodrag Protić, Ksenija Divjak, Mića Popović, Boško Karanović, Bate Mihailović, Stojan Ćelić, Leonid Šejka to all subsequent generations and artists active today. Although the exhibition is based on only one tenth of the works from the collection of the Sićevo Colony, we believe that it provides an adequate insight into the value of the collection, with it we mark the sixtieth anniversary of the Colony’s existence, but we also remind you that this priceless treasure still does not have the conditions for permanent presentation.