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Monografija - prvo izdanje - niska rezolucija

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Krstić was a significant phenomenon in the development<br />

of Serbian painting for many reasons. His views and understanding<br />

of the sacral were quite revolutionary for Serbian a cultural<br />

milieu that was quite conservative at that time. It seems that<br />

for a small number of painted iconostases in his whole career<br />

Krstić owed gratitude to the most learned man in Serbia at the<br />

time, Mihalio Valtrović. Except the burned iconostasis from the<br />

Cathedral Church, Niš, Krstić’s most highly appreciated work in<br />

this artistic field was iconostasis in the Serbian church in Čurug<br />

(35 kilometres northeast from Novi Sad), which at the same time<br />

represented the victory of Krstić-Valtrović’s ideas of “Orthodoxy<br />

in contemporary church painting”. In icons from Čurug, the artist<br />

fully demonstrated his fundamental intention to improve the<br />

idea of our old painters of medieval frescos and adapt it to modern<br />

times and his own artistic style. Residents of Čurug have all<br />

rights to be proud of the legacy Đorđe Krstić left behind.<br />

Uroš Predić and Paja Jovanović from Banat weren’t as extraordinary<br />

as Krstić, but still they were outstanding painters of<br />

Realism and great masters in the art of painting. Both of them<br />

obtained scholarships from Matica srpska and until the end of<br />

their lives they never forgot their hometowns, Predić his native<br />

Orlovat and Paja his Vršac. Thus, a traveller who visits the village<br />

of Orlovat in Banat mustn’t resist to see the iconostasis in the<br />

Serbian church that Predić painted and donated to the church authorities<br />

in Orlovat, which replaced an old and quite damaged one.<br />

Predić also painted iconostases in other places in Vojvodina such<br />

as Bečej, Pančevo, Perlez, then in the chapel in the Archbishop’s<br />

Palace in Sremski Karlovci as well as in the monastery of Grgeteg<br />

on Fruška Gora. If one adds to this an endless gallery of portraits<br />

he painted for numerous patrons in Vojvodina, it becomes necessary<br />

to describe Predić not only as a productive and sensible artist<br />

but also as an outstanding chronicler of people and events at the<br />

end of the 19 th and in the first half of the 20 th century.<br />

On a fictional journey through Vojvodina, the same traveller<br />

who saw the iconostasis in Orlovat should proceed to Vršac in<br />

Banat. In this town of long and rich cultural tradition one would<br />

Сава Текелија,<br />

оснивач Матице српске<br />

Sava Tekelija,<br />

founder of Matica srpska<br />

264<br />

certainly be attracted to “The Vršac’s Triptych” painted by Paja<br />

Jovanović and exhibited in the “Pharmacy on the Stairs”. This<br />

painting represented the artist and Serbian Pavilion at the Millennium<br />

Exhibition in Budapest in 1896. However another of<br />

Jovanović’s painting, which is perhaps today considered the most<br />

famous painting in the Serbian era of modern art, is Migrations

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