Exhibition of Fine Artists of Niš – a selection of works from the collection of the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Arts Niš
Herzegovina Museum in Trebinje, 4 – 24 June 2025
On Wednesday, 4 June, the Museum of Herzegovina in Trebinje opened the exhibition of Fine Artists of Niš – a selection of works from the collection of the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Arts Niš, authored by Emilija Bilić, senior curator. By presenting the works of Niš artists in Trebinje, the two cultural institutions are starting an inter-institutional cooperation, and it will also be an opportunity for the public of this region, based on the selected works, to get acquainted with the creativity, individual development path of the artists and gain insight into the art scene of the city.
The focus on this topic was motivated by the intention to highlight the valuable contribution of women in the field of visual arts, but also by the personality, work and social engagement of Nadežda Petrović, a famous painter who 120 years ago founded the First Yugoslav Art Colony in the village of Sićevo, not far from Niš, the forerunner of today’s Sićevo Art Colony. It is precisely thanks to the Sićevo Colony, the Graphic Workshop, purchases and gifts from solo and collective exhibitions that the GSLU fund represents one hundred works by forty authors of different generations, stylistic orientations and artistic practices, which are a significant cultural heritage of the city.
Building their professional identity, women artists have mostly remained faithful to the medium of painting, drawing and graphics, with only a few sculptures being represented, with a noticeable lack of interest in research in the field of new media and photography. Heterogeneous in visual expression, approaches and reflections, within a given chronological framework, the works testify to movements in the art of southeastern Serbia, the openness of the environment to new phenomena and contemporary aspirations, and provide the possibility of comparison in a local and broader context.
With the narratives and poetics represented, the exhibition depicts diversity and presents artists as active actors on the scene, who, stimulated by intense events and changes in fine arts, with the undoubted influence of heritage and tradition, while remaining consistent with their style and vocabulary, followed prevailing tendencies, gladly applied new knowledge, researched and experimented with techniques and materials. Compared to the number of male painters, graphic artists, and sculptors, there is a small number of academically educated female artists who have created in this environment, but taking into account the multiple roles of women in society and life in general, along with the need for self-realization, their contribution to the cultural sphere is valuable.
It is realistic to expect that female artists from Niš will soon, with the opportunities offered by modern technologies and scientific achievements in the field of art, along with communication and exchange with other cultural spaces, step into the world of new media, and that subsequent analyses and presentations will also include such types of research.
It is encouraging that interest in fine arts as a future calling is increasingly present, and that this environment every year gives birth to new generations of young female artists, whose works and engagement will one day, as part of the GSLU collection, encouraged by this, be the subject of new reflections and studies.
The exhibition will be open to the public until June 24th.