Memory of Milena Pavlović Barila

We will burn the moon to complete the nights to free the dreams to stop the breath.

Those are the verses Milena Pavlović Barila to whom he is a professor of literature, Marko Spaic, opened the exhibition of her works "Three cities, one artist", with the message that she believes and expects that the attendees "will really be breathless during this exhibition". The exhibition was opened on Tuesday evening in the Modern Gallery in Podgorica.

Director of the Museums and Galleries of Podgorica, Ivana Ćupić, for Pavlović, Barili says that she is one of the most intriguing and gifted artists from this area, who built her short but fruitful career in many world art centers.

"The artistic poetics of Milena Pavlović Barili is imaginative, exotic, mysterious and romantic. Her free understandings, openness to different cultures and contents have influenced the fact that her life and work are full of wanderings with an eternal desire to try everything by constantly challenging her own possibilities", said Ćupić.

Curator of the "Milena Pavlović Barili" Gallery from Požarevac, Mirko Kekić, he pointed out at the opening the author's research of context, and that at the age of 26 she rejected the research of form, which was characteristic of modernism.

"She switches to a traditional painting technique, but we can only now with the experience of postmodernism, transavantgarde, medial art, in these areas, understand how this traditional painting form helped Milena to deal with the context," he said.

With her paintings, she creates a surreal atmosphere, she is the most significant Serbian painter of surrealism, rejected from her homeland during her lifetime.

"Having in mind her entire biography filled with fruitful and continuous work, numerous contacts, successful foreign career, then it is not surprising that tonight, within these walls, we feel a somewhat surreal atmosphere that comes from distant places and times that were so close and natural to Milena". points out Ćupićeva.

Kekić also believes that the works of Pavlović Barila communicate more surreally and more vividly than ever before.

Ćupićeva says that the nomadic lifestyle she led from early childhood opened up her horizons and gave her the opportunity to show her talent to the world. Kekić points out that nomadism is one of its factors.

"I don't mean biographical nomadism and the fact that she lived in Munich, London, Paris, finally New York..., but that cultural nomadism, since she absorbed lessons from the societies of all these cultures and united them in her work". he explained.

He adds that one of the factors of currentness is her parallel interest in high and popular culture, "which again seems closer to us today than to the people of her time and a couple of decades later".

"Then we come to her dealing with her own identity, and therefore with her identity as a woman, considering that most of Milena's pictures show a female figure and on most of those figures we can see her self-portrait, we can recognize her facial features. Thus, Milena is shown early on in different social roles, as a painter behind an easel in the home version, as a successful representative painter, a film diva... She is shown playing and entering into a dialogue with different cultural models, for example, as Venus and so on," explains Kekić. .

He also describes her identity game as close to us as members and participants of the selfie culture, and there is also her multidisciplinarity, because she was also involved in fashion design, illustration, wrote poetry in four languages, had a Vogue cover - to which a section of the exhibition is dedicated.

"She was an unusual person who abstained from painting from 1934 to 1936. She fell into depression, which she treated by creating verses in Spanish, French, English and Serbian," explains the Serbian ambassador to Montenegro. Nebojsa Rodić.

He recalled that Pavlović Barila worked on many conceptual solutions for cosmetic lines that were just appearing.

Rodić also reminds us of her origin, a descendant of Karađorđević on her mother's side, to whom she was deeply attached, but for whom she was under pressure. On her father's side, she was a descendant of the old Italian Barili family.

Rodić believes that her death took place under strange circumstances and that it followed a joint dinner with her husband in an expensive restaurant, after which she took tranquilizers, considering that she had a busy day ahead of her the next day.

What followed was the complete oblivion of her work, which only her parents remembered. Her mother took care of the legacy and preservation of Pavlović Barila's memories.

It is well known how much she was neglected by her Serbian compatriots, but also in Yugoslavia at the time, notes Rodić. Miodrag Pavlović, in Belgrade, the initiator and implementer of the idea to create a Museum of Contemporary Art, he had serious political power behind him and managed to tear it from oblivion and to recognize what Milena Pavlović Barili meant for Serbian art and what she meant for Serbian culture, and it meant a lot, said Rodić.

He compares her with Freedom Kalo in creativity, life story, coping with illness, and says that she left a mark that can be compared to what Kalo achieved in the world. It is mentioned together with Nadeždom Petrović, notes Ćupić and says that they are two bright spots of trained artists from this area.

The presence of Milena Pavlović Barila in Montenegro started from Pljevlja...

"When the initiative came from our institution to find the works of Milena Pavlovic Barila in Montenegro, i.e. in the 'Vitomir Srbljanović' Gallery in Pljevlja, for a few moments it seemed illogical to me that only the people of Pljevlja enjoy her works," said the director of the galleries Aleksandar Ostojić emphasizing the support of all those who recognize culture as a pillar of society, "as something that unites and builds bridges".

The paintings of Milena Pavlović Barila travel along the route Pljevlja - Podgorica - Tivat, so that visitors to the galleries in these cities have the opportunity to meet the work of this artist live, whose hands and brush touched the same canvas that will be in front of them and which will say: Let's remember Milena Pavlović Barila.