server could swear that they have already seen every specific ridge somewhere, as Lubarda is so convincing,”says Dina Pavić, curator of The Legacy of Petar Lubarda. “The first visual landscape surrounding him was permanently embedded in his creative memory”. Realistic scenes carry freshness and the unbridled joy of life, even when they describe days spent in Nazi concentration camps in Germany and Italy. It is as though Lubarda filtered all bad things through a creative vent, transforming emotions in- to the bright red colour that often dom- inates his works. Like many of his generation, he learned his trade in pre-war Paris. The museums and galleries of Europe’s Capital of Culture were a better school than the famous Academy of Fine Arts. It was in Paris that he also be- came infected with modernism, and he lat- er introduced this spirit of change into the fine art of post-war Yugoslavia. Still, he nev- er accepted the label of an abstract artist, instead considering himself an eternal re- searcher. It also seems that this cost him his life: he is believed to have succumbed to the poisonous vapours of car paint lac- quer, with which he was experimenting towards the end of his life. Lubarda is also considered as having been a state, “court” artist, which had no connection with his political beliefs. Ti- to simply adored his paintings. Howev- er, a villa in the Dedinje area was given to him, to avoid the embarrassment of foreign delegations seeing such a great artist living in poor conditions. As he was without heirs, Lubarda left the villa and his paintings to the nation. The Legacy of Petar Lubarda is to- day a beautiful building, which required years of restoration. At the time that the City of Belgrade took over the legacy of this famous painter, the house at 1 Iličiće- va Street was in ruins. The remainder of the 57 pictures and hundreds of draw- ings bequeathed to the nation were con- served, with great difficulty, and many disappeared without trace. But just the 23 works that adorn the walls of the vil- la today are enough to admire him and gain an impression of the scope of his painting genius. The permanent exhibition at the Lega- cy officially opened in 2014. There have al- so been retrospective exhibitions of Petar Lubarda’s works, while the current jubilee has seen the place occupied by works from the Tarkett Collection. Lubarda’s recently discovered bust, a work of Sreten Stojano- vić, brings to life the amiable face of this famous painter. Lubarda’s frozen bronzed look seeks new inspiration.
VERA, GANDHI AND A TV SET Although Lubarda had two marriag- es, his second is discussed more. That’s because he was fatally attracted to the peculiar Vera. They met at the stu- dio of Lubarda’s colleague, Milo Milu- nović, who was then Vera’s professor, and from that point onwards they were never again separated – apart from the time when the painter, then already a member of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, travelled to India at the invitation, of the Indian Commis- sion for Foreign Cultural Relations. He was received on the eve of the opening of his exhibition in India by Mahatma Gandhi, who relayed his impressions of Lubarda to his wife in extensive letters that now form part of Heritage House’s document collection. The letters provide company to the art- ist’s easel, his favourite chair, stylish chests etc., and what’s left of his paint- ing tools, while testifying to the habits of this married couple, who were keen on technical innovations is a TV set that was the most modern at the time.
In this year of the jubilee marking the 110 th anniversary of this great painter’s birth, as many as five exhibitions will be organised in his honour. One in Montene- gro, in Petrović Castle in Podgorica, one in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Lubarda Gallery in Andrićgrad, and the other three in Serbia – at the Pavle Beljanski Memorial Collec- tion in Novi Sad, the Gallery of Heritage House in Belgrade and the Nadežde Pet- rović Gallery in Čačak. However, the public will only be able to see a part of his rich opus be- cause the canvases are often huge and contain dozens of smaller images which serve as sketches. It’s impossible to ex- pose everything he created among the thousands of scenes he painted with pas- sion, but also serious artistic considera- tion. Lubarda’s painting is multi-layered and varied in terms of genre. It extends from realism and culminates in him play- ing with abstraction. His life, which began in the village of Ljubotinje near Cetinje, was equally tur- bulent. That’s why the Montenegrin karst land is recognisable in his works - even when it’s expressed cubistically. “An ob-
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