The Gallery “Metodi Meta Petrov” in Dimitrovgrad will host an exhibition of prints created at the Graphic Workshop in Sićevo from 2022 to 2024.

October 28 – November 26, 2025

In 2005, the Gallery of Contemporary Fine Arts Niš celebrated the centenary of the Sićevo Art Colony, the first Yugoslav colony founded by the Serbian heroine and painter Nadežda Petrović. That same year, preparations began for the establishment of the Graphic Workshop, which would bring together exclusively artists who are graphic artists by profession or who cultivate graphics as a separate art discipline in their professional work. The first creators gathered in the spring of 2006 in a beautiful village near Niš, on the slopes of the Sićevo Gorge. The picturesque nature enchanted the artists, so they wove this divine nature into a graphic sheet. Just a few years later, in 2008, the Graphic Workshop gained an international character. Over ninety artists from Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Poland, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Canada, Mexico, and America worked in Sićevo. By popularizing the graphic medium, this type of residency brings together significant names from both the Serbian and international art scenes, but also follows the development of young authors from the graphic world. The Graphic Workshop collection now includes over 200 graphic sheets, in various techniques and styles. Most of the artists created in the spirit of their already established artistic expression, and therefore we inherit works of diverse graphic techniques, styles, and orientations. The works created in the graphic colony were exhibited in Prokuplje, Leskovac, Valjevo, Pirot, Sofia, Kotor, Dimitrovgrad, in addition to Niš.

In the period from 2022 to 2024, three gatherings of graphic artists from Serbia, Italy, Slovenia, Belgium, America, and France were held. The participants of these three gatherings are of different generations, come from different environments and cultures, each of them has an already established artistic style and language. They acquired their education in the field of

art at different Academies, however, working in the workshop preparing matrices, etching plates, and screen

prints, and exchanging experiences brought them all together with the aim of creating a unique graphic sheet. Many of them were in Sićevo for the first time, so exploring the natural beauty of the surroundings as well as cultural and historical landmarks was additionally inspiring, which is noticeable in the realized works. The participation of Slovenian graphic artists, thanks to the wholehearted support of the Slovenian Embassy in Belgrade, confirmed the centuries-old cooperation

of artists from these areas and the unbreakable bond between the Slavic peoples that began back in 1905. Contemporary graphics transcend traditional frameworks, and the works created at this workshop confirm that graphics can expand the established principles and structure of the graphic sheet itself. Staying and working with contemporary graphic artists like our participants leads us to the conclusion that each of them has their own unique not only visual language, but also the entire process of creation, adhering to a personal recipe

in order to obtain specific effects. So they experiment not only with the technical process, but also with the ideological postulates of the graphic medium itself. Each subsequent convocation is interesting again and again, the number of artists staying

in Sićevo is increasing, good experiences, pleasant memories of staying in our workshop are heard further and louder, which gives us as organizers a special incentive that we are on the right track and that the mission called Graphics has been fulfilled.

20 – 27 June 2022

The participants of this convocation were:

Oliver Pilić from Slovenia, Helena Tahir from Slovenia, Aleksandar Botić from Novi Sad, Lidija Krnjajić from Novi

Sad, Nikola Milanov from Niš.

5-11.2023.

The participants of this convocation are:

Roman Kušar from Belgium, Mitja Stanek from

Slovenia, Dunja Nedeljković from Italy,

Lidija Srebotnjak Prišić from Novi

Sad, Danilo Paunović from Niš.