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100 out of 1000 works from the fund of the Sićevo Art Colony

The second display of the exhibition "100 of 1000 works from the fund of the Sićevo Art Colony" will be available to the public from Thursday, September 19, from 10 a.m., in the Officers' Home in Nis. The exhibition has an international character and consists of works created in the Colony in the period from 1994 to 2024.

The exhibition "100 out of 1000 works from the fund of the Sićevo Art Colony" is organized by the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Art in Nis on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the regular maintenance of the Colony. The exhibition is designed to follow the chronological order of the duration of the Colony, illustrating its basic characteristics (Yugoslavian and international character, participation of artists of various vocations and stylistic orientations). Due to its large scale, the exhibition is realized through two settings. The first exhibition (from August 29 to September 13) was of a Yugoslav character and included works created during the first three decades of the Colony. The second exhibition is of an international character, because since the beginning of the nineties of the 20th century, artists from abroad have regularly participated in the work of the Colony. The exhibition is based on the works of authors from Serbia and other countries (Japan, Canada, Sweden, Bulgaria...), which were created in the period from 1994 to 2024. The exhibition has a multimedia character at the same time, because in addition to works of traditional media (paintings, graphics, drawings) objects, video works and video installations are represented, since the last couple of decades have been participants of the Colony and artists who express themselves through so-called new media.

 

The landscapes of the unique Sićevka Gorge are a dominant inspiration and a constant artistic challenge for numerous authors. Each of them moved along the selected paths of their own artistic poetics in the artistic creation of their experience of the gorge, using as an initial impulse a general impression, a panoramic view or just a fragment from nature (Kosta Bradić, Milena Jevtić Ničeva Kostić, Rada Selaković, Zoran Vuković, Miroslav Anđelković, Elizabet Matje, Kendži Nagai, Branko Nikolov, Sonja Vukašinović, Rajko Popivoda, Jelena Šalinić, Due Martin, Katarina Đorđević, Ivana Stanković, Miroslav Lazović, Slavica Curk, Ljiljana Šunjevarić, group DimTim...). A number of artists defined their impressions of their stay in the Colony through the symbols of the historical heritage of this region (Čedomir Vasić, Branimir Karanović, Zoran Grebenarović, Jelena Trajković, Vesna Knežević), while others pointed to the antagonisms of current geopolitics, social reality, health situations or behavioral psychology (Zlatko Glamočak, Nina Kovačeva and Stefan Valentin, Zoran Veljković, Ivana Ivković, Milica Ružić, Jovan Spasić, Ivan Milenković).

The author of the exhibition is Milica Todorović, museum advisor.

The exhibition will last until October 10.

 

For sixty years of regular maintenance of the Sićevo Art Colony, an impressive fund of artistic works was formed, which currently has exactly 1000 inventory items, of which 88 are kept in the National Museum and 912 in the collection of the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Art. In the collection of the Sicevac Colony, the most numerous are paintings (644), followed by graphics, drawings and works on paper (291), sculptures (33), photographs and works of new media (22).


Art colony "Sićevo 2024"

The Art Colony has begun: Artists will create in Sićevo for the next 10 days

The 61st convocation of the oldest art colony in the Balkans was officially opened last night in the village of Sićevo, where 9 artists from Croatia, Bulgaria and Serbia will stay for the next 10 days. The works of art created during this year's manifestation will be exhibited in the Pavilion in the Fortress in November 2025.

The art colony Sićevo continues the tradition of the first Yugoslav art colony founded by the famous Serbian painter Nadežda Petrović.

"It is with special pleasure that we open this colony, because for us this is the year of jubilee and 6 full decades of continuous maintenance of the Sićevac colony. It took a lot of vision, commitment and enthusiasm to bring to life the idea that Nadežda Petrović had in 1905 when she first gathered her colleagues here in the village of Sićevo. Thanks to that, our institution has a heritage of over 900 paintings, sculptures and new media that we preserve, study, take care of, occasionally exhibit, and we are talking about the works of over 500 authors from our country and abroad," says Ema Ćoćić Bilić, director of the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Arts. .

The opening ceremony was also attended by prof. Dr. Dejan Antić, State Secretary in the Ministry of Culture, who emphasized the unique position of supporting this important cultural event.

"It is an honor and a pleasure to be with you tonight." I use the opportunity to convey to the director and to all of you the position of Minister Nikola Selaković that the State of Serbia and the Ministry of Culture will continue to support the organization of such a colony. The Ministry has continuously supported the implementation of the Colony in previous years, and it will continue to do so in the years ahead," says prof. Dr. Dejan Antić, State Secretary in the Ministry of Culture. The collection of works of art created in Sićevo is the most valuable collection of our art of the second half of the century in the territory of Serbia itself, in terms of its historical, artistic and aesthetic characteristics.

City councilor Milica Paulus said that artists are the most important in a society and recalled the words of Nadežda Petrović.

"Artists must be teachers not only of their people, but of all peoples." Not only of his own, but of all centuries. And real art must be a teacher, an educator and a fighter for the progress of humanity. We can say that the task and mission of artists and art have not changed even today. In that name, I wish all participants a pleasant stay and successful work in this wonderful space where artists and nature compete in the beauty of colors and shapes," says Councilor Milica Paulus.

The participants of the Art Colony Sićevo 2024 are: Nina Ivanović, Marija Bogdanović, Đorđe Stanojević (Belgrade), Nikolija Stanojević, Milan Hrnjazović (Valjevo), Borislav Božić (Croatia), Dinko Nenov (Bulgaria), Milan Ristic and Tijana Savković (Niš).

The implementation of this year's manifestation was supported by the City of Niš and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Serbia.


"Trepča" by Ljiljana Šunjevarić

Ljiljana Šunjevarić's eyelashes.

Ljiljana Šunjevarić's latest art collection will be exhibited for the first time in Nis, in the Pavilion in the Fortress from August 22 to September 15. With these paintings, the artist remains consistent with the issues of social reality, but makes perhaps the first more extensive contribution to the understanding of living conditions in the north of Kosovo in local art. The complex of the Trepča Mining Combine, which symbolizes the failed ideas of socialist workers' progress, indirectly tells us about the policy of restoring Serbia's sovereignty over the province, from the end of the eighties and the more than excessive epilogue from the nineties of the 20th century. However, Ljiljana's paintings mostly thematize the twenty-year transitional vacuum in this territory, issues of people's lives and endless waiting. With that, the artist painted views of this complex in a hilly landscape in muted tones, a genre scene from the Trepča restaurant, and portraits of the staff and its guests. With the Trepča exhibition, Ljiljana Šunjevarić makes precise but open artistic remarks and thereby provokes a response from the public consciousness.

Ljiljana Šunjevarić was born in 1979 in Užice. She graduated, master's and doctorate in painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Arts in Belgrade. He has been actively exhibiting at individual and group exhibitions in the country and abroad since 2000. She was awarded in the field of drawing. She is the author of several art projects in public space. She participated in numerous domestic and international art colonies and workshops. Her artistic works are represented in many collections: Painting Collection / Period after 1950 of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade; Contemporary art collection of Nadežda Petrović Gallery in Čačak; Collection of the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Zrenjanin; Collection of the National Museum in Arandjelovac; Collection of the National Museum in Smederevo; Collection of the Museum of the City of Belgrade; Collection of the National Museum in Kraljevo; Collection of contemporary paintings of the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Art Nis and in several private collections. She is employed at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Pristina with a temporary seat in Kosovska Mitrovica, as an associate professor.


Sofija Vojinović "Dreaming"

Sofija Vojinović "Dreaming"
SALON 77

Sofija Vojinović, born in 1991 in Čačak. She completed her master's and basic academic studies at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade, at the painting department. He is a member of ULUS.
Participated in several group exhibitions and held four solo exhibitions in Užice, Belgrade, Čačak and Kragujevac. Since 2018, he has started his exhibition career with drawings in which he explores the shadow. From this project, the cycles Predestavka, Home in the Home, Shadows of the Home and the last Dreaming followed.
The shadow in Jung's personality psychology has a deep meaning and the term shadow means a part of the identity, which the ego does not understand and does not accept. Psychic traits that the human Self does not recognize as its own, but are repressed into the unconscious, where an inferior, dark part of the personality, called the shadow, is formed. What's even more interesting is that the shadow is an inexhaustible source of creativity and often superb art. Shadows are also mentioned in fairy tales and stories for children, let's remember Peter Pan, the eternal boy who chases his mischievous shadow. The Shadow  can appear in visions, memories and dreams. That's why the artist turned her shadows into memories that, although faded, remained permanently recorded in special folders and memory cards. A shadow on the wall, a shadow on the floor, a shadow from a window with outlined traces of a curtain through which, as it flutters, patterns are created on the wall, outlines of silhouettes, geometric and amorphous forms like the shadows of a home. This interweaving represents memories of childhood, events from the past, beautiful unforgettable moments experienced in youth, in life, but also repressed difficult, emotional moments that occasionally surface.
The latest cycle of Dreaming builds on previous cycles, shadows revive memories, so new fragments remain framed within the drawing, frozen in time. Daydreaming is a characteristic of artists, poets, inventors, philosophers. Many scientific achievements, imaginary landscapes of visual artists, beautiful symphonies of composers can be born from daydreaming. They have the power to materialize their dreams and turn them into a picture, music, song.

The shadows on the walls, drawings, and canvases of Sofija Vojinović represent geometric compositions with a pronounced perspective, painted in gray valer of a transparent spread with a visible overlapping of crossed lines and surfaces. Discreetly presented combinations of vertical and horizontal surfaces, bordered by a shadow through which the light passes, a certain contrast is obtained, which is very important in fine art. That contrast enhances the excitement of the composition. However, the artist places special emphasis on the shadow, which is dominant in the entire composition. Judge for yourself if only the visualization is important or if the artist is just playing around, would she not in that way draw our attention to listen to our Self a little better, and accept it as it is without any inhibitions and complexes.