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 being organized on the artist's hundredth birth anniversary after a significant time of his absence. This rich and diverse artistic opus is comprehensively presented for the first time.

The National Museum of Serbia will open the exhibition on Friday, November 15, at 18:00, believing that the exhibition provides a genuine opportunity for direct encounter, experience, understanding, reexamination, 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, spanning from the 1940s to the 1980s. Starting from partisan art and socialist realism, moving towards abstract expression within socialist aesthetics and modernism, exploring work in various materials, and pioneering sculptures made of transparent polyester.

The exhibition's curator, Lidija Ham Milovanović, curator of the Collection of Yugoslav Sculpture at the National Museum of Serbia, has selected a total of 100 exhibits, with sculptural works being dominant. 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 Compositions with an appended serial number in the year of creation, the exhibition layout, as a new spatial composition, carries a title that follows the artist's practice.

Most of the selected materials are owned by the Kratochvil family. Besides works from the National Museum of Serbia, the exhibition includes pieces 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 Gallery from Zrenjanin, Muzej Zepter, as well as three works in private ownership. The selection of exhibits comprises emblematic works by Kratochvil, along with a selection of achievements that marked his creative phases from the beginnings to works that we consider represent his latest and most inventive outcomes of his artistic quest.