Exhibition 'Jovan Kratochvil. Composition 100/24'

Exhibition 'JOVAN KRATOCHVIL - COMPOSITION 100/24'

National Museum of Serbia November 15, 2024 - January 26, 2025

A retrospective exhibition of Jovan Kratochvil (1924-1998) is being held on the occasion of the artist's hundredth anniversary of birth and a sufficient period of his absence to comprehensively review his rich and diverse artistic oeuvre for the first time.

The National Museum of Serbia opens the exhibition on Friday, November 15, at 6 pm with the belief that only the exhibition is a true opportunity for direct encounter, experience, understanding, reevaluation, summarization, and possible repositioning of Jovan Kratochvil's artistic legacy.

The exhibition setup Jovan Kratochvil - Composition 100/24 brings together his most significant works from all creative phases, created from the 1940s to the 1980s. Starting from partisan art and socialist realism, through the path to abstract expression within the framework of socialist aesthetics and modernism, and exploring work in various materials, up to pioneering achievements of sculptures made in transparent polyester.

The exhibition curator, Lidija Ham Milovanović, the curator of the Collection of Yugoslav Sculpture at the National Museum of Serbia, has selected a total of 100 exhibits, dominated by sculpture. Also presented are Kratochvil's paintings, graphics, and drawings, along with documentary exhibits on public monuments. Considering that Jovan Kratochvil often referred to his works as Composition followed by a sequential number in the year of creation, the exhibition setup as a new spatial composition carries a name that continues the artist's practice.

The selected material is mostly owned by the Kratochvil family, and in addition to works from the National Museum of Serbia, the exhibition includes works from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, the Museum of Yugoslavia, the Faculty of Fine Arts, the National Museum of Šumadija in Kragujevac, the Contemporary Gallery from Zrenjanin, Muzej Zepter, as well as three works in private ownership. The selection of exhibits includes emblematic works by Kratochvil, as well as a selection of achievements that have marked his creative phases from the beginnings to works that we believe represent the last and at the same time the most inventive outcomes of his artistic pursuits.