A Close-Up Look Into Paja Jovanović’s Atelier

  • Location: Museum of Paja Jovanović, 21 Kralja Milana Street/4th floor
  • Date: October 15 - February 10, 2019
  • Impressum:

    Isidora Savić, author of exhibition and catalogue; Milutin Marković, design of catalogue

The exhibition A Close-Up Look Into Paja Jovanović’s Atelier is dedicated to reconstruction of the interior, as well as, recreating the atmosphere of Jovanović’s atelier in Vienna. In accordance to the artist’s wish, the inventory was donated to Belgrade City Museum in 1952. The artist’s paintings, drawings, sketches, personal objects, and artistic requisites, which were a part of once luxurious Viennese atelier, will be exhibited in the Museum of Paja Jovanović.

Atelier of Paja Jovanović, a world-renowned academic artist, by its setting, purpose, and what it represents, matches the concept of large European ateliers, from the period between the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. By binding its private and public function, a collector’s passion and his need for beauty, Jovanović’s atelier is a mirror image of himself, but also of the spirit of that time. It was fitted within the spirit of Historicism, decorated with paintings, valuable furniture, and many requisites and tools, thus offering an image of an intimate, and public biography of an artist. Its reconstruction offers to the modern visitors “a close-up look” into Jovanović’s world of paintings, and personal objects. The space in which the artist once had an intimate fantasies of beauty, while painting his wife’s Möuni naked body, was the same space where models posed in oriental costumes, armed with flint-stone guns and knives. It is the same space where receptions were held, friends and artists met. That very space has been recreated in contemporary exhibition, whilst Jovanović’s personality, and his work were directly placed “into the collective memory of Serbian capital”.