Exhibition 'Jovan Kratochvil. Composition 100/24'

The retrospective exhibition of Jovan Kratochvil (1924-1998) is being organized on the occasion of the artist's 100th birthday anniversary and significant period of his absence, to comprehensively review his rich and diverse artistic oeuvre for the first time.

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

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

The exhibition curator, Lidija Ham Milovanovic, has selected a total of 100 exhibits, predominantly sculptures. Additionally, Kratochvil's paintings, graphics, and drawings are presented, along with documentary exhibits on public monuments. Considering that Jovan Kratochvil often referred to his works as 'Composition' with an appended ordinal number in the year of creation, the exhibition setup, as a new spatial composition, has adopted a title that follows 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 Sumadija in Kragujevac, the Contemporary Gallery from Zrenjanin, Muzej Zepter, as well as three works in private ownership. The selection of exhibits includes Kratochvil's emblematic works, as well as a selection of achievements that have marked his creative phases from the beginnings to works that we believe represent the latest, simultaneously the most innovative outcomes of his artistic quests.