“THE FUTURE IS BEHIND US” Rome’s biggest gallery is celebrating Mira Brtka You can see a major retrospective exhibition of the Serbian artist at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art
THE 10 TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH OF ARTIST MIRA BRTKA will be commemorated with the displaying of her work in Rome, where she launched her artistic career and left a deep mark. The retrospec- tive exhibition presents Brtka's top works in paintings, sculptures, film work and fashion design, as well as a representative selection of Mira’s famous dresses, and it’s all set over an area of 1,000 square metres of exhibition space in Rome’s Nation- al Gallery. The glamour of the opening cere- mony of the retrospective exhibition of this Serbian artist, which was at- tended by numerous high-ranking representatives of the political estab- lishment, cultural elite and old nobil- ity of Italy, in the best sense of the word, confirms the exceptional ar- tistic choice of the National Gallery to present itself to an international audience. According to the curators of the National Gallery themselves, Mira Brtka’s retrospective exhibition attracts extraordinary attention from the audience and is evidently already breaking the attendance record. Set on two levels in the imposing space of this large and important Italian cultural institution, the exhibition
includes over a hundred works, cre- ated precisely in Rome, confirming Brtka as one of the great European artists of the second half of the 20 th century. She was a new era renaissance personality. Born in Novi Banovci in 1930, she created art for more than five decades, working in Stara Pazo- va, Belgrade, Prague, Rome, Novi Sad and Bratislava. She graduated in film and theatre direction at the Academy of Theatre and Film Arts in Belgrade in 1955, then also graduated from the painting department of the Acade- my of Fine Arts in Rome in 1963. It was in Rome just a year later that she had her first solo exhibition. Brtka was a member of the international art group “Illumination”, founded in Rome by Nobuya Abe, while she also shot short films and documentaries and worked as an assistant director on numerous productions, including the famous Battle of Sutjeska, star- ring Richard Burton as Tito. “I had the good fortune to find myself in Italy at the right time, work- ing at Cinecittà, and prior to that in Prague. Films were different then than they are today, much more en- gaging. And it always seemed to me that completing the shooting of a film
was like graduating from university,” said the artist, who collaborated or socialised with greats in Italy, from Federico Fellini to Claudia Cardinale. She also dealt with fashion de- sign and Italian women were walk- ing in her first dresses already by the late ‘60s. They were also worn by Is- abella Rossellini... Italy, and more specifically Rome, was crucial to her creativity as a whole. She was a multimedia, multi- disciplinary and multicultural artist, who actively created, and sometimes simultaneously, in the fields of film and theatre direction, dramaturgy, scenography, animation, fine art, em- broidery, sculpture, costume design, fashion design and artistic activism.
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