ENGLISH VERSION

TheFourteenth Colony of Naive and Marginal Art was organized by Museum of Naive and Marginal Art in Jagodina on Zlatibor from 28th July to 4th August 2008.
This international manifestation has been organized biennially as a review, recognition and encouragement of naive and marginal art since 1984. Being well aware of the responsibility and importance of Museum in protection and creation of further trends in naive and marginal art, the organizers have had a clear concept and model in the selection of the artists since the very beginning of the Colony. They made efforts to gather and motivate those artists who would be capable of creating the works valuable enough to survive the passage of time, thus being valuable legacy for future generations. In this way, the collection of Museum of Naive and Marginal Art was selectively enriched with more than 300 works (drawings, graphics, paintings and sculptures). More than two hundred eminent artists from all Serbian and former Yugoslav regions have participated in the Colonies. Since 1994, the Colony has had an international character. Following current trends on the international artistic scene, the organizers included the domain of marginal art in 2001.
Nearly three decades of this manifestation bear witness of the vitality of its concept, its promoting role, importance and aesthetic validity as well as of the established cultural communications among different regions. In this way, the Museum has made notable contribution to bringing the specific domain of naive and marginal art closer to both professional and general audience.
Twenty-five artists from Serbia, Hungary, Italy and Bulgaria accepted the invitation to participate in the Fourteenth Colony: Barberien, Tomislav Blagojević, Guido Vedovato, Dragica Gajić, Jure Grgin Miloš, Milanka Dinić, Miroslav Živković, Dušan Jevtović, Milosav Jovanović, Miroslav Jovanović Dalton, Ferenc Kalmar, Jelena Marković, Života Milanović Žića, Dobrosav Milojević, Vojkan Morar, Desanka Petrov Morar, Dušanka Petrović, Saša Petrović Berdujac, Mirjana Popović Radović, Rosen Rašev, Milan Rašić, Marko Stevanović, Sandra Tanurdžić Rovčanin, Ilija Filipović and Pal Homonai.
Validity of the concept of artistic colony is confirmed by uninterrupted attendance of nearly all remarkable naive artists in Serbia, whose inclination towards permanent activity and whole series of valuable realizations and poetic solutions justify the project. Among them are the painters Milosav Jovanović and Dušan Jevtović who participated in the First Colony in Strumica (Macedonia) in 1964, where besides academic painters, about twenty naive artists from former Yugoslavia were invited. Milosav Jovanović and Dušan Jevtović are among the most inventive naive artists. At the 14th Colony they presented the works characterized by humanism and contemplation over people and their lives under the visible surface. The energy of emotions and strength of imagination are basis of their creative work.
Numerous winners of the most respectful rewards and recognitions, as well as permanent participants of the colonies (since 1984 on) were also present: Milanka Dinić, Danica Gajić, Jure Grgin Miloš, Miroslav Živković, Ferenc Kalmar, Dobrosav Milojević, Desanka Petrov Morar, Dušanka Petrović, Milan Rašić, Ilija Filipović and Pal Homonai. A considerable number of the collected works and their versatility are competent enough to enable the perception of their artistic achievements in wider thematic, stylistic, morphological and poetic sense. These artists remain devoted to their firmly shaped and persistently cherished artistic poetics. In fact, in their whole oeuvre, they have kept to the values that ranked among the most distinguished naive and marginal achievements. At the same time, their readiness and ability to introduce new details unobtrusively and make valuable improvements without rejecting the standards that made their works identifiable, they confirmed their creativity and inventiveness by tracing new motifs and solutions.
Milanka Dinić specifically treated her magic and fantastic worlds rooted in myths and legends, using ornament motifs, stylization and freely intertwining vegetation, human and fantastic beings and architecture. Her meticulous, detailed, bright and fairy visions made her one of superb poetic visionaries in naive art.
Milan Rašić and Pal Homonai start from nature as essential subject matter in humans, which they deeply emotionally evoke in the paintings full of signs and symbols. Miroslav Živković’s works reveal the painter of mystic atmosphere and reduced colouring with daring, luminous effects, while in Dobrosav Milojević, imagination and reality are extremely sensually and emotionally intermingled in the narrative that tells us about his deep and emotional relation towards his homeland.
The artists reached own poetics following different pathways: attached to traditional mode of living and depicting it warmly, simply and clearly like Desa Petrov Morar; presenting the atmosphere of purity and calmness and delightfully stylized vegetation like Dragica Gajić, or through blooming countryside of dream-like beauty like Dušanka Petrović. Jure Grgin Miloš found own way in lyrical, stylized landscapes where both empirical and imaginary scenes coexist, while Marko Stevanović approached the joy of childhood on fairy background.
Sandra Tanurdžić and Mirjana Radović create authentic and recognizable works with presentations of selected elements of urban ambience, making them poetical using rich colours and pronouncedly dyed masses. While Sandra Tanurdžić freely and spontaneously treats gesture, colour and form, Mirjana Radović makes her old facades flourish with emotions and hot, sunny colours.
Prominent sculptors were also present at the Colony: Ferenc Kalmar, who effectively contrasts coloured surfaces of wood, thus accentuating the expressiveness and energy of volume and Ilija Filipović, whose sculptures in stone contain a universal feature, evoking the idea of eternity. Saša Petrović Berdujac, a young sculptor, reveals directness and wholeness of shaping and the feeling for suggestive movement (A Bat) and consequently preserves the structure of wood as material (A Holy Warrior). On this occasion, the artists Guido Vedovato from Italy (wood) and Života Milanović Žića (stone) were also present. Their sculptures repeat stylistic features of their paintings: clearly defined composition masses and refined coloured texture in the organization of the painting in Vedovato and miraculous complexity of life and creatures depicted with wide, contrasting coloured surfaces in Milanović.
Unrest, movement, generation gap and clashes of different pictorial expressions are proof of real life and indication of development in art. Therefore, the Colony has always been open to the artists of different generations and aesthetic preferences. The presence of young, unconventional artists who are actively present on both domestic and international scene means the gathering of new energy, new sound and impulse, thus implying and multiplying the pathways of development in naive and marginal art.
Barberien, Rosen Rašev, Vojkan Morar, Miroslav Jovanović Dalton, Tomislav Blagojević and Jelena Marković bear witness of new sensibility of pronounced individualists characterized by intensity of pictorial expression, choice of subject matter and freedom of combined techniques and materials. Bulgarian artist Rosen Rašev is a mature artistic personality, recognizable for his inexhaustible inspiration and readiness to examine all techniques and materials. His paintings are based on elements of collages, childishly unskilled drawings of figures and objects, or on portions of thick, intensive colour bordered with tread, randomly thrown spots that are given sense by adding some text and stylized details in between. He is an exquisite colourist, draftsman and sculptor, with powerful sense for contrast of colour, shape and rhythm.
Barberien is a master of figurative irony and grotesque. His paintings reveal critical and disturbed views about life, depicted in deeply personal expression. The wish to present internal tension of a man, using a mass of dissonantly coloured and contrasted surfaces distinguishes Miroslav Jovanović Dalton.
Vojkan Morar’s point of view is quite opposite. He is a painter of refined sensibility and a visionary with powerful symbolical meaning and concretion. In the technique of a classical artistic handwriting and special filigree procedure he creates magic and dynamic areas inhabited by angels.
Tomislav Blagojević and Jelena Marković belong to the youngest generation of artists whose participation in the Colony is the stimulus in further exploration of own artistic expression. Employing pure colour and strong stylization, Blagojević reduces the shapes to symbols and signs, thus constructing and interpreting his remote and imaginary worlds. Jelena Marković introduced herself using a specific visual diary, realized in the form of sensitive and sophisticated powerful drawing. The basic structure of the drawing consists of overall contrasts of filled and empty space, organized in daring, imaginary and completely spontaneous combination of most various drawing elements: dancing web of lines, hatches and intertwines, in the midst of which the symbols of the artist’s personal preoccupations emerge as a kind of leitmotifs.

Marica Vračević