Надежда Петровић и Сезан: један неуочени утицај
Nadežda Petrović and Cézanne: an Unnoticed Influence

Summary/Abstract: Af­ter a prolonged stay in Paris, from June 1910 to February 1912, Nadežda Petrović returned to Serbia in time for the Fourth Yugoslav Artistic Exhibition, held in Belgrade in May and June of the same year. She showed nine paintings at the exhibition and wrote a long and ambitious review of it published at the same time. The review makes clear her views on modern art and also her personal acceptance of its exploratory character and the freedom it grants the artist to pursue his individual vision in preference to following the still influential canons of Academic painting. An important feature of the review, unremarked in the art-historical literature, is the central position Nadežda assigns to Cézanne as perhaps the supreme of modern masters. She even quotes, in a condensed but essentially faithful translation, a crucial passage of Cézanne’s reflections on painting, as summarized in 1904 by Emile Bernard: „There is no line; there is no modelling; there are only contrasts. Black and white do not provide these contrasts; the colour sensations do. Modelling results from the perfect rapport of colours. When they are juxtaposed harmoniously, and when they are all present and complete, the painting models itself. [...] Drawing and colour are not distinct from one another; gradually as one paints, one draws. The more harmonious the colours are, the more precise the drawing will be. Form is at its fullest when colour is at its richest. The secret of drawing and modelling lies in the contrasts and af­fi­nities of colours.” (Doran 2000: 32–33) The quotation has no obvious relevance to the main subject of Nadežda’s review, and the reason for its inclusion must be sought elsewhere. I argue that Nadežda included it in order to draw attention to the fact that she was attempting to follow Cézanne’s ideas herself. I refer to the self-contained group of three small oil paintings, „Reaping” (Ill. 4), „A Country Dance” (Ill. 5) and „An Open-Air Bazaar (Skopje)” (Ill. 6), executed at the time she was writing her review or only a few months later. Except for a few general comments, they have mostly been ignored by critics and art historians; I submit them here to a detailed analysis, which clearly confirms the influence of Cézanne’s ideas quoted in her review. I end the paper by connecting Nadežda’s homage to Cézanne to her well-known requirement that true art should be national in character, stated at the end of her review of the Fourth Yugoslav Artistic Exhibition.

• Details
• Contents