Exhibition Boško Petrović: Sketches for Great Works, Pavilion in the Fortress
The Gallery of Contemporary Fine Arts Niš invites you to the grand opening of the exhibition Boško Petrović: Sketches for Great Works on Thursday, July 11 at 8 p.m., Pavilion in the Niš Fortress.
An extensive opus of drawings for tapestries, sculptures, and mosaics will be presented to the Niš audience thanks to the cooperation of the SLU Gallery and the Museum of Vojvodina, which owns a large number of works by Boško Petrović, on the occasion of an important anniversary – the hundredth anniversary of his birth and forty years since the death of the famous artist.
Boško Petrović belonged to the war and post-war generation of authors who, in the middle of the last century, set out in search of a new, authentic artistic expression. In addition to classical painting, he worked with mosaics, drawings, watercolors, collages, and graphics, and is one of the rare artists who contributed to the development of tapestry and its affirmation.
In order to present the part of the works that presents the creative process and method of work, without emphasizing the subject itself, the author Dragana Garić Jovičić presents the sketches for a monument, a mosaic, and a tapestry in the exhibition Sketches for Great Works. All three works, created in different techniques, were conceived as monumental, but the sculpture was never realized.
The audience will have the opportunity to see for the first time a model of the monument and a map of graphics for the Monument to Slavery, created during World War II, partly as a result of novice artistic searches but at the same time one of the first ideas for a monument to the revolution that emerged in occupied Europe.
In the early 1950s, Boško Petrović began to work intensively with mosaics, primarily small-format portraits in this technique, and part of the exhibition is one of the more impressive sketches for the monumental mosaic that is today in the Assembly of the Autonomous Province of Vojvodina.
A special set of works are sketches on the theme of revolution, made for tapestries and murals, created in the period from 1965-75. The extensive cycle of sketches, together with the monumental tapestry, depicts the dedication and professionalism with which Boško Petrović approached the topic.
According to Dragana Garić, the original, bold and expressive artistic expression of this artist with an exceptionally rich oeuvre has placed him among the most significant Vojvodina artists.
Boško Petrović was a participant in the Sićevo Art Colony in 1975, he organized a solo exhibition in Niš in 1976, and the SLU Gallery has 16 of his works in its collection.
The exhibition in the Tvrđava Pavilion will be open to the public until August 5.