After thousands of tourists, hikers, mountaineers and lovers of traditional Bar cuisine, Stari Bar has recently hosted specific visitors, who will enjoy its beauty for a long time. In the old house of Jovović in Gretva, an artistic married couple from France, Julijan Modika Helmštrot and Lena Nikčević, opened studios, which breathed new life into this three-century-old building among olive trees, and showed Stara Bar that it is ready for guests other than "classic ".
Lena Nikčević says that she came to Bar with Julijan and their three-and-a-half-year-old twin sons Juraj and Oreste so that the children could master the language and learn their roots. They stay in Montenegro for a year, and then spend the same time with the same goal in Munich because Julian is "half Italian and half German".
"We have big studios in France and we manage to make a living from what we do, so it was a big change to leave all that and come here, but the adaptation is going well for us. We were looking for a space where we could work, and which was far from the consumer society, and my father referred me to Professor Ivan Jovović to help us choose. Quite by chance, we found out that he had just renovated the old family house and we were delighted when we saw it - lots of light in the rooms, inspiring surroundings... Nature has really given the people here the greatest gift", says Nikčević, who completed the first three years of art school in Cetinje. Academy, and graduated in France, where she then spent 18 years.
According to existing written sources, this one-story stone house with walls from 80 centimeters to one meter thick was built in 1722 and is one of the oldest "in use" houses in Bar, certainly one of the rare stone houses preserved in their original form. Publicist and historian Ivan Jovović, president of the Bar branch of Matica Montenegrin, points out that when renovating the house, he wanted to preserve Montenegrin folk architecture in its original form. The house was built by Stijepo Jovov, and eight descendants of Jovović, the oldest family in Gretva, lived under its roof.
"During the reconstruction, I tried to make everything as it was before, I also consulted the archaeologist Omer Peročević, using the available materials to restore both the interior and the exterior. This approach was caused by family emotions and memories, but also the desire to valorize our cultural heritage through what used to be the strategic direction of Stari Bar, namely art studios and craft activities, so that everything is not reduced to banal commercialization. I'm glad that in my house there are now the only two active studios in Stari Bar, which, it seems to me, give a kind of signpost to the local community as to where and how to go here," Jovović points out.
Julian Modika says that he is very pleased with the peace in Gretva, which will certainly be an inspiration to him later, given that he is now finishing works "that were already mentally constructed". Julian graduated from the famous mosaic school in Spilimberg, Italy, and in 2011 he received the first prize of Orsoni, an old Venetian glass manufacturer, for his mosaic portrait of Frank Zappa. He worked a lot on the restoration of sacred monuments, from Lourdes, through the Marseilles Cathedral of St. Mary, to the Mor Gabriel Orthodox Monastery in Turkey.
"I continued with the mosaics here where I left off in France, but when I "let go", my works will surely reflect on this beautiful environment, the sea.... What I do is abstract art and my answer to the world in which people live faster and faster, and my stone mosaics are works that "slow down" time and require a "slow-motion" walk", Julian points out.
Lena's creative process also requires a lot of time, she digs transparent materials, "it takes at least seven days to work." She turned to the landscapes that she showed at the exhibitions in Tour and Semyonje in September, for 2018 she is preparing a new exhibition in Tour, and joint work with her husband as part of the traditional annual project of the international group of mosaicists of which Julian is a member.
They are tired of the consumer society
"We are tired of the consumer society, that we have to be always connected, present on social networks. Today, an artist must first be a politician, and only then an artist. What we do in the studio is a family-artistic project, our common goal is to let's give back not only to the family, but also to the natural core," says Nikčević.
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