Exhibition of Milena Pavlović Barili
November 2018 – March 2019
Milena Pavlović-Barili (5 November 1909 – 6 March 1945) was a Serbian painter and poet. She is the most notable female artist of Serbian modernism. Her father was famous Italian composer, Bruno Barilli, and mother Danica, a descendant of the Karađorđević dynasty, was a lady in waiting to Queen Maria of Yugoslavia.
Milena studied at the Royal School of Arts in Belgrade, Serbia (1922–1926) and in Munich (1926–1928). In the early 1930s, she left Serbia and returned only for brief visits until the outbreak of World War II. During her stays in Spain, Rome, Paris and London, where she socialized with Jean Cocteau and André Breton, she was influenced by many western schools and artists, notably Giorgio de Chirico. After 1939, she lived and worked in New York where her career peaked as an illustrator for Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and other publications. In 1941, she appeared in the Twentieth Annual of Advertising Art, and before her death, she was commissioned to design costumes for Gian Carlo Menotti’s ballet Sebastian and a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream which were never completed. She died after a horse-riding accident at the age of 35. Her outstanding works graced galleries all over the world and her ideas sitting at the forefront of the surrealist movement.
Many of her works are parts of permanent exhibitions in Rome, New York City, Museum of Contemporary Art (Belgrade), and her hometown of Požarevac. In 1943, Pavlović-Barili’s work was included in Peggy Guggenheim’s show Exhibition by 31 Women at the Art of This Century gallery in New York.
In the authentic ambient of the House of Jevrem Grujic, surrounded with painters personal items you will be introduced to the dream world and the mystery behind every brushstroke of intriguing painter, poetess and fashion illustrator.
Author: Ružica Opačić, Lazar Šećerović
