Exhibition "Jovan Kratochvil. Composition 100/24"

Exhibition

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

A retrospective exhibition of Jovan Kratochvil (1924-1998) is being held on the 100th anniversary of the artist's birth and ample time of his absence, in order to comprehensively review his 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, believing that the exhibition is the only true opportunity for direct encounters, experiences, understanding, reevaluation, summarizing, and possible repositioning of Jovan Kratochvil's artistic legacy.

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

The exhibition curator, Lidija Ham Milovanovic, curator of the Yugoslav Sculpture Collection at the National Museum of Serbia, 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 titled his works 'Composition' with an added sequence number in the year of creation, the exhibition layout, as a new spatial composition, is named in continuation of the artist's practice.

The selected material is largely owned by the Kratochvil family, and alongside 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 emblematic works by Kratochvil, as well as a selection of achievements that marked his creative phases from the beginnings to works that we believe represent his latest, simultaneously most inventive outcome of his artistic quests.