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.

A retrospective exhibition of Jovan Kratochvil (1924-1998) is organized on the 100th anniversary of the artist's birth and a sufficient time of his absence, in order to comprehensively view his rich and diverse artistic opus for the first time.

On Friday, November 15, at 6 pm, the National Museum of Serbia will open the exhibition with the belief that only the exhibition is a true opportunity for direct encounter, experience, understanding, reconsideration, 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 between the 1940s and 1980s. Starting from partisan art and socialist realism art, through the path to abstract expression within socialist aestheticism and modernism, exploring work in various materials, to pioneering achievements in 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, with sculpture being dominant. Also presented are Kratochvil's paintings, graphics, and drawings, along with documentary exhibits on public monuments. Considering that Jovan Kratochvil often named his works Composition with the added serial number in the year of creation, and the exhibition setup as a new spatial composition took a name that follows 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 setup 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 the latest, as well as the most inventive outcomes of his artistic quests.