Exhibition "Jovan Kratochvil. Composition 100/24"

The exhibition "JOVAN KRATOCHVIL - COMPOSITION 100/24" will be held at the National Museum of Serbia from November 15, 2024 to January 26, 2025.

The retrospective exhibition of Jovan Kratochvil (1924 - 1998) is organized in the artist's hundredth anniversary and a sufficient period of his absence, in order to comprehensively review this rich and diverse artistic opus for the first time.

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

The exhibition setup 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 art, through the path to abstract expression within socialist aesthetics and modernism, through work explorations in various materials, all the way to pioneering achievements of sculptures made in transparent polyester.

The exhibition curator, Lidija Ham Milovanović, the curator of the Yugoslav Sculpture Collection at the National Museum of Serbia, selected a total of 100 exhibits, among which sculpture is dominant. Also presented are Kratochvil's paintings, graphics, and drawings, along with documentary exhibits about public monuments. Bearing in mind that Jovan Kratochvil often titled his works Composition with an appended serial number in the year of creation, the exhibition setup, like a new spatial composition, took on a name that continues the artist's practice.

The selected material is largely owned by the Kratochvil family, 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 Art Gallery in Zrenjanin, the Zepter Museum, 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 inventive outcome of his artistic quests.