Exhibition 'Jovan Kratochvil. Composition 100/24'

The 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 100th birthday anniversary and after enough time has passed since 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 conviction that only through the exhibition can there be a true opportunity for direct encounter, experience, understanding, reevaluation, summarization, and possible repositioning of Jovan Kratochvil's artistic legacy.

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

The exhibition curator, Lidija Ham Milovanovic, curator of the Collection of Yugoslav Sculpture at the National Museum of Serbia, has selected a total of 100 exhibits, among which sculpture dominates. Additionally, Kratochvil's paintings, graphics, and drawings are presented, along with documentary exhibits on public monuments. Bearing in mind that Jovan Kratochvil often labeled his works as Compositions with an added ordinal number in the year of creation, the exhibition layout as a new spatial composition has taken a title that continues the artist's practice.

The selected material is largely owned by the Kratochvil family, and in addition to works from the National Museum of Serbia, the display 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 accomplishments that have marked his creative phases from the beginnings to works that we believe represent the latest and, at the same time, the most inventive outcomes of his artistic pursuits.