RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION
DRAGAN MOMCILOVIĆ
On April 25, 2024, the Niš Gallery of Contemporary Fine Art is organizing a retrospective exhibition of paintings and drawings by Dragan Momčilović. With this exhibition of selected works from the field of fine art, the artist celebrates 50 years of his artistic work. The exhibition will be officially opened by Goran Stanković, a Serbian writer of poetry, prose, and essays. In addition to the above, he is engaged in editorial work, as a long-time editor in Gradina, then director of the Niš Cultural Center. Since 2002, he has been the chief editor in the same institution. Winner of many awards in the field of literature. First of all, Goran Stanković is a long-time friend and collaborator of Dragan Momčilović. At the opening itself, we will have the opportunity to enjoy the performance of several musical numbers performed by a string quartet from the Leskovac Symphony Orchestra.
Momčilović was born in 1952 in Crna Trava, from where the family moved to Ćičevac, where he finished elementary school, and then entered the five-year Art School “Đorđe Krstić” in Niš. On the recommendation of professor Dragan Kostić, after finishing art school, he started working at the then young and promising publishing house “Gradina”, where he established a sign and symbolic recognition, and furnished over 1000 titles. At the end of the seventies, he enrolled in the “Kliment of Ohrid” Pedagogical Academy, became a member of ULUPUDS and ULUS. Even though he was working on book editing, as a technical editor, actually at that time the painterly being was developing in him, inspired by poetry, literary works, above all the poems of Branko Miljković. Fascinated by lyricism and spirituality, he creates his artistic language by building it very thoroughly and systematically. His paintings become epitaphs dedicated to deceased writers or dialogues with contemporaries of the painting profession. Series of diverse works followed year after year in countless combinations of paintings, drawings, objects. Entire cycles of thoroughly elaborated works of art were created: Epitaph, Horizon, The Blue Line of Life, Seven Dead Poets, About Branko Miljković, Dialogue with Todor (Stevanović), Through Painting and Object… In addition to the above, Momčilović has been constantly exploring nature and everything for decades. what surrounds him, but above all by his experience, his memory. Carried away by personal philosophical thinking, imaginary landscapes filled with symbols, abstract pasty surfaces, endless embodiment of the horizon, from which the sun rises and sets as a symbol of life and its spirit, were created.
His palette is recognizable, distinctive, individual, as well as the way of painting and combining abstract, symbolic and geometric expression through colored drawing. Momčilović’s versatility in the fine and applied arts of the past five decades will remain permanently recorded, through a large number of awards and recognitions from many fairs and individual and collective exhibitions of members of ULUS and ULUPUDS. We must especially highlight his personal engagement in creating the culture of the city, and his great merits for the formation of the Art Colony “Classic” of the Niš Tobacco Factory (Philip Morris), where he worked from 1993 to 2005. After retiring, he devotes himself completely to painting and working in the studio with the same intensity, creating everyday surrounded by friends and family. With this retrospective exhibition, he marks 50 years of his artistic work, with works carefully selected from his rich oeuvre. Despite the changes he went through, he remained consistent with his chosen creative direction and artistic expression, which is clear and very recognizable. Looking at all phases of his work, starting from the figurative, until the last abstract, he remained consistent with the enformal and associative illusion of the subject form with noticeable traces of artistic abstraction. The maturity and experience gained through daily work and involvement is now here in front of us and he has proven it with his actions. Fragmentation and layering as well as boundless expressive energy fit with the artist’s temperament, which is of the same intensity as at the beginning of his creative journey. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalog and an almanac with the painter’s artistic manifesto. Dragan Momčilović still wants to say a lot and record it permanently on the painting canvas, and we thank him for that from the bottom of our hearts and wish him to continue creating as long as possible.
The exhibition will last until May 25, 2024.