The exhibition "2020 year" by the artist Mihailo Jovićević is available since yesterday in Podgorica in the "Centar" gallery, where it will be open to visitors until June 27.
Jovićević points out to "Vijesti" that the works were selected and adapted to the exhibition and gallery.
"I didn't choose the works, they chose themselves. According to the space of the gallery, they are of smaller format. I am exhibiting more than half of the works for the first time and I received a compliment that they are not too cheerful, which corresponds to the title of the exhibition", says Jovićević.
In his painting, Jovićević has always been preoccupied with sacred themes, the relationship between man, God, the cosmos and the universe, notes art historian Milica Bezmarević, curator at the Center for Contemporary Art of Montenegro.
"The origin of such thought and artistic preoccupations of his can be sought in the archetypal regions of the Montenegrin area where he grew up, as well as in the war traumas that he survived as a boy in the Albanian camp. Nevertheless, such violent impressions of the wartime childhood and the rugged landscape that he was always surrounded by did not give birth to any fear or nightmarish visions of suffering and decay, but a painting in principle dedicated to something positive and spiritual, highly exalted in man, to what belongs to the essence of Christian ideology, to elevation and striving for divine justice and mercy as the only way of salvation and hope", wrote Bezmarević.
She adds that on this path of creation, Jovićević continuously studied all aspects of the Christian religion and its symbolism for decades, truly searching for its meaning and meaning.
"That's how everything that is mystical, spiritual and transcendental in the relationship between man and the universe became close to him in painting. The title of the exhibition '2020 year', which mainly features works created in the past few years, almost has a prophetic tone in the sense of some ancient artistic prediction. All those great biblical themes, representations of saints, dominant Christian symbols such as the cross, the fish, the eye and others, which for decades were the main iconographic motif of Jovićević's painting, are now almost abstracted into a single unit of specific narrative. The two millennia since the birth of Christ seem to represent a new starting point in Jovićević's thought and artistic process. This wonderment over human spiritual, intellectual and civilizational achievements, elevations and sufferings is a moment in which the entire human being is questioned, its meaning and existence, which acquires a unique character in Jovićević's painting", Bezmarević points out, and Jovićević confirms.
"This is the year 2020 since the birth of Christ. Also, this year is accompanied by the latest events around us, which I would not list because we all know and feel them," he says. Mihailo Jovićević was born in 1939. He graduated from the High School of Art in Herceg Novi, the Academy of Fine Arts and postgraduate studies in Belgrade. He studied painting with Milo Milunović, and conservation with Milorad Medić.
He was a professor at the Cetinje High School, curator and museum advisor at the "Cetinje Museum", professor at the Faculty of Culture and the Faculty of Fine Arts in Cetinje. He was a visiting professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Trebinje and a professor at the Faculty of Visual Arts, University of the Mediterranean in Podgorica.
He participated in numerous exhibitions in the country and abroad. He is the winner of several awards, including the Thirteenth of July Award. He has the status of a prominent cultural creator.
An artist-philosopher unique in the modern art of Montenegro
Milica Bezmarević says of Mihai Jovićević that the artist is a philosopher, and she considers his work to be unique in Montenegrin modern art, because it is unique in terms of intellectual content and artistic expression in which Jovićević brings a spiritual and mystical atmosphere through accumulated human figures in motion and in the crowd.
"The thought and transcendental is expressed in the almost abstract language of the painting, which thematizes the unique energy of the metaphysical space where the dualism of good and evil is eternally present. In this sense, perhaps the most exciting are the pointillistic performances that suggest endless cosmic spaces of extraordinary spiritual charge. The artist's intimate reflections on the collective spiritual heritage of civilization in today's time, the time of current plagues, migrant crises and all other phenomena in a year of emphasized Christian symbolism, are sublimated in a painting of high spiritual concentration which, like a prayer, offers comfort and faith in divine salvation," he adds. Bezmarević.
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