Katarina Ivanović u Beogradu: NACIONALNA HEROINA ILI STRANKINJA?
Katarina Ivanovićin Belgrade: NATIONAL HEROINE OR FOREIGNER?

Summary/Abstract: The following paper deals with national and cultural identity and significance of the first Serbian woman painter Katarina Ivanović. Although born in Hungary in the 19th century, she was closely associated with Serbia by origins and tradition, a country that at that time for the first time encountered a woman painter. She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna and in Munich, aspiring to use the acquired knowledge to glorify the national ideology by means of visual art. Poet Sima Milutinović Sarajlija contributed most to her status of contemporary national heroine, although she held that status only outside the Principality of Serbia. The long awaited arrival in Belgrade did not meet her expectations. Instead of praise and large historical compositions she experienced the ignorance by her people. She felt like a stranger in her own land. Belgrade did not even resemble the European metropoles that she had visited previously. She left a gallery of portraits as her legacy. Desired Conquest of Belgrade was created much later. Her stay in Belgrade had triggered her identity crisis, which did not pass until belated credit for her work arrived. Katarina Ivanović was the first woman to become a member of the Serbian Learned Society. Upon her death, she bequeathed her paintings to the National Museum in Belgrade, which then for the second time in history became the exclusive proprietor of one artist’s complete works. The paper deliberates on the position of women in nineteenth-century Serbia, Katarina Ivanović’s sovereign path to success as well as her public perception.

• Details
• Contents