The exhibition Parallel flows, Wiener Art Collection, opened last night in the Art Gallery of the Kruševac National Museum and presents 50 carefully selected works of art that range from classical painting, objects, photography, video work and sculpture, covering the period of dynamic artistic development from the 50s to the first decade of the new millennium.

In his address to the audience, the host of the exhibition, Nikola Pantelić, director of the Kruševac National Museum, emphasized the importance of corporate collections for encouraging artistic production and new artistic practices, and expressed his satisfaction for the cooperation on this exceptional exhibition.

The wide time span of creativity covered by the exhibition was chosen with the intention of showing the richness of alternative thinking about art and its boundaries, through the key works in which these thinking were first articulated.

“Having appeared on the domestic art scene as a parallel flow, in the complex fabric of the Serbian art scene, this expression of Serbian avant-garde, radical and experimental art, not only did not lag behind the most avant-garde trends in Western art, but in some cases even went ahead of them,” said Saša Janjić, curator of the exhibition.

All works form an important part of the Wiener Art collection of contemporary Serbian art, which the company Wiener Städtische osiguranje began to form in 2011 and which, with over 600 works, as it counts today, represents one of the most representative collections of recent art in our country and a rare collection from this area that systematically and consistently collects and preserves works of art of contemporary Serbian art.

“Most of the works collected at the Parallel Streams exhibition were presented to the Austrian audience at the exhibition “Unknown Familiars” in the prestigious Leopold Museum in Vienna in the period May-October 2024. Immediately after returning to Serbia, our audience has the opportunity to get acquainted with the true masterpieces of the local art scene, which reflect the spirit of their time, while at the same time moving ahead of established social, political and artistic practices at the time of their creation,” said Nela Bojović, marketing manager of Wiener Städtische osiguranje.

The works of artists – Vladan Radovanović, the Novi Sad group Dei Leči (Bora Vitorac and Dragoljub Pavlov), Mrđan Bajić, Gergelj Urkom, Srđan Apostolović, as well as representatives of the Belgrade conceptual scene – Dragoljub Raša Todosijević, Zoran Popović, Neša Paripović, Radomir Damjanović Damjan, as well as the artists Mira Brtka, Milena Čubraković and Ana Bešlić, Kruševac residents and guests of this city will be able to see during the exhibition until May 10. After Kruševac, the exhibition travels to Pirot and other cities in Serbia with the aim of enriching the cultural offer, whereby Wiener Städtische osiguranje strives to contribute to increasing the availability and variety of cultural content in different environments.

Works and oeuvre of the artist are available on the website: art.wiener.co.rs

Ana Bešlić “Dvobojna skulptura”

Raša Teodosijević “Sitnosopstvenička umetnost”