Sport in Art. The Art of Sport
After the immensely successful showcase of the exhibition in the Cultural Centre of Serbia in Paris, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Republic of Srpska in Banja Luka and the Museum of Herzegovina in Trebinje, the exhibition Sport in Art, The Art of Sport will be officially opened on Friday, May 16 at 8pm at the Gallery of Matica srpska.
The Olympic games have influenced social events and have been permanently etched into the culture of the European continent ever since ancient times. They stopped wars and placed athletic competition before weapons, science and trade. Competitors with a sporting spirit were and have always remained examples of people with noble virtues and some of the highest human values by combining within themselves the harmony of both the physical and mental skills. Art has always acknowledged those kinds of qualities, kept pace with them and made them everlasting through various exemplary representations of ancient athletes in the spirit of the Latin saying Мens sana in corpore sano. Last year’s hosting of the Olympic Games in Paris, the city of art, has encouraged us to search for art and museum pieces in Serbian museum collections depicting sport and sporting activities, as well as to showcase, using the selected pieces, one possible perspective on the sporting-artistic identity of the Serbian people.
The exhibition Sport in Art.The Art of Sport includes over 40 artworks and items created in the period between 1858 and 2018. The exhibition will feature selected pieces from the collection of the Gallery of Matica srpska, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Republic of Srpska, the Museum of Yugoslavia, the “Sava Šumanović” Art Gallery in Šid, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, the Gallery of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and the Heritage House in Belgrade. The selected works are signed by artists Sava Šumanović, Ivan Radović, Petar Dobrović, Ivan Tabaković, Steva Todorović, Petar Omčikus, Dušan Todorović, Bojan Bem, Uroš Đurić, and Tomislav Peternek, as well as Henry Moore, Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Gottfried Helnwein, and James Rosenquist. The public will also have the chance to see sports equipment, medals and photographs from the collection of the Museum of Yugoslavia, and artistic photographs from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, which testify to the participation of Serbian and Yugoslav athletes in previous Olympic Games and the organization of the leading sporting events in the former state.
The exhibition will also present, using new modern technologies, the oldest depiction of sport in the famous painting First Serbian Gymnastics Society from 1858 painted by Stevan Todorović from the collection of the National Museum of Serbia.
„There is no doubt that sport as a phenomenon of modernity has fascinated numerous creators during the 20th century. At the same time, sport has managed to rise above the mere ‘thematic’ preoccupation of artists. Sport in art paved the way towards the art of sport. Or perhaps it was the other way around? Visitors to the exhibition in Paris will witness precisely this dialectic, and the Cultural Center of Serbia will be a mandatory stop between two sporting events. Because when in Paris, one cannot do without art, even when it seems as though sport will ‘take’ first place from it.” – from the review by Prof. Dr. Dijana Metlić, art historian.
Through the preparation of this exhibition the “museum representation” has been formed, which, through a unique selection of artworks and museum items, participated at the Olympics in Paris last year in the art discipline with the theme of sport in Serbian museum collections and it pointed to the importance of cultural diplomacy.
The realization of the exhibition is a result of collaboration between the Gallery of Matica srpska, the Museum of Yugoslavia, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Republic of Srpska, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade. The exhibition Sport in Art. The Art of Sport is accompanied by a Serbian-French catalog of the same name with an introductory text by Dr. Tijana Palkovljević Bugarski, director of the Gallery of Matica srpska, and Neda Knežević MA, director of the Museum of Yugoslavia, who are also the project coordinators. Authored essays were contributed by Prof. Dr. Simona Čupić, art historian, and Prof. Dr. Sarita Vujković, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Republic of Srpska, who are also the exhibition’s authors. Professional associates in the realization of the exhibition are Nikola Ivanović MA, curator of the Gallery of Matica srpska, and Radovan Cukić, senior curator of the Museum of Yugoslavia.
The Ministry of Culture of Republic of Serbia has made the realization of the catalog and the exhibition possible, and the French Institute in Serbia has offered additional support. The exhibition is sponsored by DDOR Insurance Novi Sad, which is also the official insurer of the Serbian Olympic team.
