AWARD
Jury of the 14^th Biennial of Naїve
and MarginalArt has awarded the following artists:

Honorary Recognition Oto Bihalji-Merin
Vera Ristić, adviser
Slobodan Sanader, art critic
 

Award for Entire Artistic Work
Milan Rašić

Grand Prix for Exhibited Works (Painting)
Vojkan Morar

Grand Prix for Exhibited Works (Combined Technique)
Joškin Šiljan

Grand Prix for Exhibited Works (Sculpture)
Milan Stanisavljević

Special Recognition for Exhibited Works
Purchase Award
Dorte Marcussen (Denmark)

Special Recognition for Exhibited Works
Roza Žarkih (Russia)

Recognition for Exhibited Works
Lone Villaume (Denmark)
 

Jury:
dr Jerko Denegri, art historian
Valerija Balasz Art, art critic (Hungary)
Ljiljana Kojić, art historian
Nina Krstić, art historian
Ivana Jovanović, art historian




 

The Fourteenth Biennial
of Naïve and Marginal Art

For nearly three decades, Museum of Naïve and Marginal art in Jagodina has been organizing Biennials as one of the best ways to elucidate current concepts in naïve and marginal art, their vital trends that re-examine the existing criteria and reveal the tendencies of dynamic development in this domain of contemporary art. The Biennial of naïve and marginal art is a kind of intersection of available current international phenomena and tendencies in this field at certain period. It offers recognition and encouragement to most valuable works and continuous insight in the work of already recognized authors with defined authentic expression, as well as identification, support and monitoring of new artists. It also provides the possibility to collect documentation, perform further scientific work and enrich the Museum collection.
This year, Museum of Naïve and Marginal Art organizes the biennial for the fourteenth time. The selection of works for the exhibition is always a challenge for the Jury and involves responsibility to recognize authentic artistic quality, originality, creativity, stylistic equability and sincerity of artistic experience regardless to thematic, technical, linguistic and stylistic orientation of the authors. Respectable experts Jerko Denegri PhD, one of leading authorities in contemporary art and Valerija Balaž Art, art critic from Budapest, approached the phenomenon of naïve and marginal art from other position and with their fresh perception contributed to objectivity of selection criteria and the work of the Jury at the Fourteenth Biennial of Naïve and Marginal Art. The members of the Jury from Museum of Naïve and Marginal Art are museum counselors Nina Krstić, Ljiljana Kojić and curator Ivana Jovanović, who have continuously monitored the trends in naïve and marginal art.


 

For years, competent jury and numerous supporters of the Museum have made special contribution to establishing criteria and selecting the works. Among them, respectable experts who have followed the development of naïve artistic phenomena since the early beginnings, specifically stand out. From this Biennial on, Museum of Naïve and Marginal Art is going to award Honorary Recognition Oto Bihalji Merin as homage to the eminent expert who stands out as a crucial figure in research and promotion of naïve art both in this country and abroad. This year, winners of this special recognition are Vera Ristić, museum counsellor and Slobodan Sanader, art critic, who have studied and promoted this specific artistic field, participating in the work of many significant events of naive art since the earliest beginnings as mambers of the Jury at the First Quadriennial of Yugoslav Naive Art in Čačak (1962). In addition, the winners of the recognition are long-standing supporters of the Museum who have especially contributed to the development of naïve art.

Great interest in participation in the Biennial this year confirms that the Biennial has developed into an open artistic event that assembles and combines great number of authors of different generations, with authentic artistic affinities and pictorial expression. Out of two hundred and ninety-three works done by eighty-two artists, the Jury has selected a ninety-eight works by fifty-three artists from Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Germany, Russia, Denmark, Turkey, USA and Brazil. The largest group of remarkably creative individuals who, persistently confirming their authentic pictorial expression, have participated in the Biennials and received awards and recognitions for many a year, stand out as permanent and basic framework in the selection of the Fourteenth Biennial. Among them, especially distinguished are the winners of the Award for Entire Artistic Work at previous Biennials (Milosav Jovanović, Pol Homonaj, Dušan Jevtović, Dragiša Stanisavljević, Desanka Petrov Morar and Ferenc Kalmar) and manyfold winners of awards and recognitions (Milan Rašić, Milan Stanisavljević, Milanka Dinić, Jure Grgin Miloš, Ilija Filipović, Dobrosav Milojević, Životin Nikolić, Edeltraid Lehman, Barbarien, Rosen Rašev etc.). With strength of authentic and inventive imagination of expression, these artists successfully realize specific artistic statements that confirm their permanent creative obsessions.
Receiving the Award for Entire Artistic Work this year, Milan Rašić joins the circle of artists whose decade-long elaborated, powerful and authentic oeuvre established and traced the pathway of naïve and marginal art. For nearly six decades of continuous and passionately devoted work, this worldly classic of naïve art has created a specific world of remarkable individuality and high artistic achievements. The motifs of idyllic native landscapes where he places stylized and reduced shapes of buildings, houses, churches, monasteries, condensed scenes of everyday life, folkways and legends are idealized and synthesized representations of the artist’s experience, memory and imagination. Harmonic, balanced and vertically built compositions are sublimated with lyrically refined values of pastel coloures. In his paintings, Rašić structurally animates nearly all surfaces with a dynamic network of fragmentary strokes, points, lines, commas, circles without disturbing specific poetics of harmony to which all pictorial elements are subordinated.
Outstanding artistic qualities of the works in various fields of naïve and marginal art at this Biennial brought the Jury to award three prizes for exhibited works at this Biennial. Grand Prix for Exhibited Works in the field of painting is awarded to Vojkan Morar, the artist of younger generation. Although like a specific angelarium, nearly always devoted to one motif, quite specific world of his paintings is an inexhaustible source of inspiration and wealth of inventive variations of individual, refined and intensive artistic experiences. In lower zones of the paintings, the artist portrays fantastic architecture of unreal cities or monasteries surrounded with utterly stylized human images with outstretched arms pointing to heavens that personify the souls in their unfaltering pursuit of higher spheres. The figures portrayed with roots that keep them tied to the ground and the crowns stretching towards heavens personify the dualism of human nature, conditioned by the materialistic yet aspiring to freedom of spirit. Multitude of miniature representations of these figures with outstretched arms are moved by violent gravitation towards the swarms of angels, which in the upper zone of the painting dominate the scene as central promoters of the composition. We experience the magic world of Vojkan Morar’s paintings as a miraculous scene, open to mystic and spiritual dimension that creates new pictorial reality of authentic artistic refinement.
Although paintings prevail among the submitted works for the Fourteenth Biennial of Naïve and Marginal Art, which is not surprising since sculpture is the domain with proportionally smaller number of authors, it is noticeable that this field of naïve and marginal art shows encouraging shift. In comparison to several previous Biennials where certain stagnation and absence of monolithic and epic sculptural forms was noted, this Biennial reveals a greater number of not only recognized authors like Dragiša and Milan Stanisavljević, Ferenc Kalmar and Ilija Filipović, but also a whole series of authors who appear at this international event for the first time. Wealth, diversity, freedom of expression, techniques, materials and style of the sculptures marked out the Fourteenth Biennial. Grand Prix for Exhibited Works in the field of sculpture is awarded to Milan Stanisavljević. The artist’s fascination with the world of birds reaches almost mythical dimension in his monumental and monolithic sculptures of massive trunks. Utterly reduced and condensed masses of stylized archaic forms and rustic structural potency of deep grooves dramatically remind of irrepressible and unforeseeable strength of nature.
A number of young authors like Tomislav Blagojević, Jelena Marković, Saša Petrović Berdujac and others, whose works were previously awarded and who have shown continuity of high-ranking artistic quality, have confirmed the selection criteria at this Biennial. The appearance of large number of artists who participate in this event for the first time is especially encouraging. Among them, the works by Joškin Šiljan, Dorte Markussen and Lone Villaume reveal an outstanding individuality. Grand Prix for Exhibited Works is awarded to Joškin Šiljan, the artist with new sensibility primarily in the freedom of combining techniques and materials then in authenticity and intensity of expression. Creative phantasm and strength of instinctive directness make this author investigate extensive range of different expressive means, unusual techniques, materials and formats. His works at the Fourteenth Biennial reveal his interest in unconventional structure of artistic work, independent experience and experiments with modalities of visual and spatial effects, involving the observer share the experience by moving about it. Whether examining unusual forms of picture-objects or specific structural forms, Šiljan reveals the freedom of utilization of mixed material (wood, canvas, rope, brushwood, wire), which in various procedures (painting, sewing, binding, cutting, perforation) he transforms into surprising wealth of structural and colour sensations, thus displaying hidden records of his thoughts, fascinations, experience, obsessions and fears.
Since the last Biennial, Museum of Naïve and Marginal Art has made it possible for foreign artists to apply for selection by sending their works by E-mail in order to support and facilitate the participation of those from faraway countries and various cultures, which resulted in their stronger presence. The individuality of their expression include specific artistic forms and cultures of their motherland, thus being in synergic interactions and providing a special emanation to the Biennial of Naive and Marginal Art as a traditional event. In addition to Edeltraut Lehmann from Germany, Pál Homonai and Ilona TóT Gombkötőné from Hungary, Rosen Rašev from Bulgaria, Guido Vedovato from Italy and Danica Kotroman from Bosnia and Herzegovina who have been participating in the Biennial for many years, Lídia Saczkovski of Ukrainian origin from Brazil, Sema Çulam from Turkey, Irene Brandt from Germany and Tsuyoshi Mamada of Japanese origin from USA who appeared at previous Biennial, Thais Ibanez form Brazil, Dorte Marcussen and Lone Villaume from Denmark drew special attention at the Fourteenth Biennial.

Special Recognition for Exhibited Works is awarded to Roza Jarkih, the artist from Russia who participated in the Tenth Biennial of Naïve and Marginal Art. Employing specific and unusual technique of painting in embroidery on fabric, this artist embodies pictorial wholes of extraordinary strength and poetics in long lasting and demanding procedure. Various stitches by which the artist conjures up wealth of coulours, drawings and strokes create subtle texture and special tactile experience. Rosa experiences her passionate creation as the essence of her life, as a struggle to achieve spiritual purity and balance and a bridge that connects realistic world with parallel, vibrating, unreachable imaginary world of her inner fancy and fantasy.
Special Recognition for Exhibited Works and Purchase Award are awarded to Dorte Markussen. This Danish artist is inspired with the epoch of modern urban phenomena and new technologies, either in a traditional form of painting on canvas or in the field of other media. In her paintings, the artist portrays urban scenes of streets and squares with prevailing stylized architecture, unusual snapshots, free use of inverse perspective and combination of different angles of viewing. Significantly reduced, refined compositions are subtly revived with small genre subject matters. In this era, global expansion of new information and communication technologies changes our reality in all segments; new challenges and possibilities exert inevitable influence on the artist’s perception and expression. Artists experience this domain of expression as unlimited artistic freedom that challenges their imagination. Investigating the possibilities of artistic expression within the extended media in her installation Alphabetical shops in X dimensions, this Danish artist paints a traditional form consisting of twenty-nine smaller-sized units on canvas, combining it with a blog as a specific virtual and interactive form. Thus limitless in time, this multidimensional work becomes open. Hereby, creative process and development is uninterrupted; it never ends; it is never completed. Aspiring to total artistic freedom and establishing most open communication of her art, she makes it available to unlimited number of people who may interactively intervene on her blog www.abxd.dortemarcussen.dk. In this way, Dorte Marcussen has incorporated additional unlimited time and space X-dimension into her installation.
Lone Villaume, the artists Denmark who is now participating in the Biennial for the first time is awarded Recognition for Exhibited Works. In small sized paintings where reduced composition and all artistic elements dominate, the artist achieves intense expression of subject matter, idea, form and colouring. The scenes from everyday life, mostly with elderly people that radiate with optimism in lightsome atmosphere of idleness, are imbued with specific, sometimes ambivalent humour. The shapes are utterly stylized, indicated with simple drawing of pronounced expressiveness, depicting physiognomies on the verge of caricature. Intensive and bright coulouring, often complementary, create impressive and harmonious wholes.



The Fourteenth Biennial of Naïve and Marginal Art as a whole conveys the impression of challenging mosaic of various artistic sensibilities and is one of possible dynamic representations, informative to the extent to which the available material offered enough data for true review of present conditions in naïve and marginal art. Nonacademic, unconventional field of authentic, autonomous, unlimited artistic laws and remarkable individualities do not exclude one another. With creative fantasy and purity of instinctive artistic sincerity, naïve and marginal art minimizes defined cultural and pictorial canons creating new relationships in sublimed dualism of nature and technology as a reservoir from which it draws unlimited freedom of choice and exists as a vital and fruitful link between the traditional and the contemporary.
Ivana Jovanović
 

Dorte Marcussen, 2006-2007