50,000 people saw Paja Jovanović's exhibition

Belgrade, Jan.25,2010 (Serbia Today) - The exhibition organized by Belgrade National Museum "Paja Jovanović” which has been set on  December 23rd, 2009 in the Gallery of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU) in Belgrade, has received its 50.000th visitor
Nikola Milosavljević, being the 50.000th visitor, was awarded with exhibition catalog that provides a framework for understanding Paja Jovanović (1859-1957)and his artistic opus. The exhibition "Paja Jovanović", which was held on occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth of the painter, was represented with his 97 works. To the audience was presented Jovanović's creativity, emphasizing motifs from the lives of Balkan people with historical compositions, illustrations of folk epic songs, portraits, landscapes, nudes and studies.
Presented works come from the collections of the National Museum, the Museum of the City of Belgrade, Gallery of Matica Srpska in Novi Sad, Art collection of SANU, the National Museum Pančevo,  National Museum of Zrenjanin, endowments of King Peter I from Oplenac, the Historical Museum of Serbia, as well as from private collections. The Author of study texts in the catalog is professor of the University of Philosophy in Belgrade Miroslav Timotijević.
The exhibition will be opened until February 21, 2010 and during its duration different programs were organized– lectures, expert guidance through the exhibition, film screenings and activities.
Paja Jovanović was born in Vršac in 1859.  He graduated painting on Art Academy in Vienna. He traveled frequently to the Balkans, particularly Montenegrian coast, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the southern and eastern Serbia and full of impressions after those trips, he painted his famous genre pictures.
The image "Wounded Montenegrin", exhibited at the annual exhibition at the Academy in Vienna in 1883 was awarded with first prize and then he also got the imperial scholarship.
In 1895 Jovanović received two significant orders for the Millennium exhibition that was to be held in Budapest in 1896.  The first order came from the Patriarch George Branković to paint a grandiose historical composition, "Migrations of the Serbs under the Patriarch Čarnojević”, and another from municipality of the Vršac for the picture "Vršac triptych''. The Government of the Kingdom of Serbia asked him in 1900,  for the World exhibition in Paris, to create a historical composition, "The Coronation of the Emperor Dušan April 14,1346", which won the gold medal.
Paja Jovanović died in 1957in Vienna. According to his wishes, the urn with his ashes was transferred to Belgrade.