Symbolic and monumental: Montenegrin sculpture in focus at the City of Theatre festival

The art program of the XXXIX edition of the Grad Teatar festival was officially opened on July 13th in the church of Santa Maria in Punta in Budva's Old Town.

This is the exhibition "Crossings - Sculptures" from the collection of the Public Institution "Museums and Galleries of Podgorica", which features sculptures by Krsto Andrijašević, Milun Čvorović, Dragoljub Adžić, Nada Kažić, Momo Vuković, Miško Babović, Jelena Pavićević, Risto Radmilović, Pavle Pejović, Drago Đurović and Velibor Pavićević.

The author of the exhibition is art historian Ljiljana Karadžić.

In her speech, the editor-in-chief of the Grad Teatra program, Svetlana Ivanović, highlighted the challenges, but also the organizers' commitment to preserving the continuity of presenting important artistic content within the festival, despite the circumstances.

"Somehow it seems to us that some strange circumstances always occur that accompany the realization of art programs, but despite this, the City of Theatre once again manages to present to the public a significant exhibition that will remain in the history of this festival. Continuing the mission of the City of Theatre to research the art heritage of Montenegro, this year, thanks to friends, we approached the Public Institution Museums and Galleries from Podgorica with a request to help us realize one of the two exhibitions that will be on the program of this year's festival."

Cooperation with the Public Institution Museums and Galleries of Podgorica was achieved, as stated by Ivanović, with the exceptional willingness and openness of colleagues from that institution, and the opening date of July 13th was not chosen by chance.

Ivanovic reminded that this date, the Statehood Day of Montenegro, is traditionally dedicated to the domestic art scene within the festival.

"We have agreed that this exhibition will be held on this very July 13th, which is another, we could say, tradition of the festival's art programs, that this day that we all celebrate will be dedicated to Montenegrin fine arts," she said.

A special part of the address was dedicated to the recently deceased Professor Aleksandar Čilikov, a great friend of the festival and a significant intellectual who left a deep mark on the art and cultural scene of Montenegro.

"We all know that Mr. Aleksandar Čilikov has left us, and since Professor Čilikov made an immeasurable contribution to the Grad Teatar festival, not only to the art program, but also to the literary program and all those programs where we reflected on the nature of the festival and the importance of art for the contemporary world, we decided together to make this brief review and to thank him for the knowledge he shared with us during his lifetime," she pointed out.

The exhibition was officially opened by curator Ljiljana Karadžić, who expressed her gratitude to the organizers for their trust and cooperation, emphasizing that it was an honor for her to participate in this project.

"When selecting works for this exhibition, I was guided by the ambient whole, that is, the space of the church itself, which is already stimulating enough, interesting enough, and it seems to me that almost anything placed in such an environment would look good. I believe that sculpture in Montenegro is not as well-established as painting. We are still a country that is called a country of painters, and it still seems to us that there is an easel painting on a pedestal, and that sculpture is what, as Donald Judd used to say - we stumble upon when we enter the gallery, to step back a little to see the painting better."

The exhibition "Crossroads" includes 12 sculptures by eleven Montenegrin authors, and Karadžić attempted to offer a kind of overview of contemporary Montenegrin sculpture through the selected corpus of works.

"I was guided by the idea of trying to present a brief history of Montenegrin sculpture, or a small sketch, through the selection of a symbolic number of sculptures. One of the oldest in this exhibition is about 70 years old, and several sculptures are our contemporaries."

Through an analysis of formal oppositions, abstract and figurative, smooth and rustic, expressive and intimate, the curator highlighted the diversity of approaches among artists. She paid special attention to the works of individual authors, such as Drago Đurović, Momo Vuković, Dragoljub Adžić, Krsto Andrijašević, Miško Babović and Pavle Pejović, emphasizing their specificity and importance for the domestic sculpture scene.

"Đurović is known for his elegant, musical, mannerist lines and in this way beautifully combines emptiness and fullness. Vuković monumentalizes what is perishable and organic, he places plants and fruits at the center of his interest, which is very unusual for a sculptor from this region. Adžić is the first ceramic artist from Montenegro and this combination of geometry and organic forms, the combination of something that is a dream and something that is pure mathematics, reaches its climax in his sculptures," said Karadžić, concluding that the exhibition brings "a fusion of different sculptural poetics", and expressing the hope that everyone will find some personal experience in contact with the exhibited works.

The exhibition "Crossings" will be open until August 1st and represents a unique opportunity for the audience to get to know a representative cross-section of contemporary Montenegrin sculpture through works from the rich collection of the Public Institution Museums and Galleries of Podgorica.