Milena Pavlović-Barili

Milena Pavlović-Barili: Self-Portrait

Milena Pavlović-Barili ( Serbian - Cyrillic Милена Павловић-Барили ; born November 5, 1909 in Požarevac ; † March 6, 1945 in New York ) was a Yugoslav painter and poet who is now regarded as one of the pioneers of modern Serbian art.

Life

Her Italian father Bruno Barilli was an influential Italian composer, her Serbian mother, Danica Pavlović, a distant relative of the Karađorđević family , studied singing and piano at the Munich Conservatory, where she met and fell in love with Barilli.

Her father's name and influence opened the doors of literary salons and galleries for young Milena , which enabled her to circulate in the highest intellectual circles. Her extraordinary parents and her family introduced her to aestheticism , dandyism and the art of secession as well as the arts of bygone eras. She later became fluent in five languages.

Already at the age of twelve, Milena , who had already been praised as a “ child prodigy ” , attended an art school, finally the art academy in Belgrade (1922–1926) and then in Munich (1926–1928) with Franz von Stuck , with whom she stayed until the end of her life a pen pal linked, art. The co-professor of her preliminary exams, Habermann, also praised her talent. Her great role model was the painter Giorgio de Chirico , who was also studying with von Stuck at this time. However, Chirico himself did not have too much of an opinion of Serbian painting, as he found its palette to be “greasy and dark”.

Barili's name appeared in Politika as early as 1926 . Andrejević Kun and Lazar Ličenoski were friends. In this artistic phase she was drawn to the world of myth, fantasy, glamor and fascinating emotions; consequently she painted Hamlet , a wounded Indian, Rudolpho Valentino and other actors, using movie posters as models. The contemporary art critic Dragi Stojanović profoundly misunderstood her talent when he viewed her merely as a born decorative painter and caricaturist .

In contrast to many other artists of her time, she learned neither from Pablo Picasso nor from Henri Matisse . Her role models were the masters of the 19th century such as Aubrey Beardsley , Gustav Klimt , Max Klinger and Arnold Böcklin . She also ignored the possible suggestions of Wassily Kandinsky , abstract art, Dadaism and other currents of the avant-garde. During her time at the Munich Academy she showed a great interest in exotic and ethnographic motifs, painted nudes and natural events that suited her cosmopolitan and romantic inclinations.

She had her first exhibitions in Belgrade in 1928. She left Serbia in 1930, as she could not find a job as a drawing teacher there in the south or in the small towns of Štip , Veles and Tetovo , and only made brief visits until the outbreak of World War II back to their motherland.

Until the late 1930s she lived in Spain , Rome , Paris , Oslo and London . There she associated with Frida Kahlo , Tamara de Lempicka , Albert Savini , André Breton and Jean Cocteau and participated in joint exhibitions with the latter two, whereby she was most strongly influenced by these two and de Chirico. According to her mother's memories, the painter would have painted almost day and night during this decade when she was obsessed with something. She illustrated her father's book, Parigi (1938), herself.

Carl Van Vechten , portrait by Milena Pavlović-Barili, 1940

From August 1939, she lived in New York , where she developed a more romantic style with echoes of the Pre-Raphaelites and, in addition, economic pressure to maintain the impression that she was not only an intellectual part of high society, but also a commercial one Worked design of fashion magazines and painted portraits of the local upper class. She published some of her works, such as Hot Pink With Cool Gray in 1940 in Vogue or in Harper's Bazaar and Town and Country .

Julien Levy , who also organized Salvador Dali's first US exhibitions , held her first exhibition in his gallery in 1940 (March 19 to April 9, 1940). In the United States, she married the Airforce pilot and officer Thomas Astor Goslen, whose family would cherish her later memory. There is a photograph of her by Carl Van Vechten from this period .

In 1945 Milena Pavlović-Barili died unexpectedly of a spinal injury after a riding accident. Her urn was brought to Rome on August 5, 1949 and buried in the Protestant cemetery .

classification

The content and choice of topics in her work range from portraiture (portraits of Robert Thomas Goslen or Rosamund Frost ) to independent interpretations of biblical themes from Christian iconography . Nightmarish and surreal scenes repeatedly appeared in her motifs , veils, angels, statues of the goddess Venus and harlequin figures . Only the Spanish painter Remedios Varo took similar borrowings from mysterious motifs during the 20th century.

According to Lazar Trifunović , her work is part of surrealism. However, contemporary surrealists like Dorothea Tanning , Kay Sage , Leonora Carrington , Toyen and Valentine Hugo can hardly be compared with her. Miodrag B. Protić, on the other hand, distinguishes between three creative periods in the course of her artistic career: the “Munich Period” (1928–1932), the “Ancient Period” (1932–1936) and the “ Renaissance Period” (1936–1945).

Together with Nadežda Petrović , Milena Pavlović-Barili is now regarded as a pioneer of modern Serbian art.

reception

The artist is said to have had a certain influence on the Italian composer Gian Carlo Menotti , who is a friend of her, due to the mysticistic echoes in her pictures. In addition, Menotti immortalized her in one of his operas, probably in Das Medium (1946), and after her death was in possession of her image of the nun with the flaming stigmata heart.

Her birth house in Požarevac has been converted into a museum where her works are exhibited. In addition, works by Milena Pavlović-Barili are exhibited in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade and in art collections in Rome and New York. In July / August 2009 Serbia celebrated its 100th birthday as a special cultural event with two special exhibitions of seven of their main works. The exhibition was visited by more than 100,000 people. An exhibition in Rimini , Italy, in 2009/2010 at the Museo della cittá honored the artist's reputation.

Memorial plaque at the entrance to the gallery
Memorial room
Exhibition hall
Milena's painting accessories
Milena's bust, the work of the sculptor Nebojša Mitrić
The covers of "Vogue" and one of the dresses that Milena created

Works

poetry

Poezija. Edited by Milisav Milenković. (Parallel texts in Serbian, Italian, French and Spanish) Verzal press, Beograd 1998. ISBN 86-7388-057-2 .
Neverni anđeli. Edited by Milisav Milenković. (Parallel texts in Serbian, Italian, French and Spanish) Nolit, Beograd 2009. ISBN 978-86-19-02465-5 .

literature

Elisa Tosi Brandi, Alessandra Vaccari: Milena Pavlovic Barilli: la moda nella stanza di un'artista = moda u sobi umetnice. , Exhibition catalog, Museo della cittá, Rimini, December 2009 / January 2010, texts in Italian, Serbian and English, Pendragon, SI 2010. ISBN 978-88-8342-818-0 .
Olivera Janković: Milena Pavlović-Barili. Tory, Beograd 2001. ISBN 86-335-0098-1 .
Adele Mazzola: Aquae passeris. La vita de Milena Pavlović-Barili. Pendragon, Bologna 2007. ISBN 978-88-8342-795-4 .
Miodrag B. Protić: Milena Pavlović-Barili. Zivot i delo. Prosveta, Beograd 1966.

Web links

Commons : Milena Pavlović-Barili - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ Bruno Barilli . Rodoni.ch
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Dejan Djorić: Driven Away to Succeed. Milena Pavlović-Barili. (1909-1945), Truly Serbian, Truly International . In: Национална Ревија - Serbia National Review. 2009; Retrieved November 20, 2012.
^ Illustration by Hot Pink With Cool Gray , 1940. On: Tumblr ; Retrieved November 20, 2012.
^ Holdings of the Library of Congress
↑ Miodrag B. Protić: “Everything in Milena's life is extraordinary, unusual - its beginning, duration and end.” Quoted from: Dejan Djorić.
^ Milena Pavlović-Barili. arte.rs; Retrieved November 20, 2012.
^ Siglind Bruhn: Saints in the Limelight: Representations of the Religious Quest on the Post-1945 Operatic Stage. Pendragon Press 2003, p. 176. However, Bruhn also assumes, to a considerable extent, a suicide and not a riding accident.
↑ Jelica Milojković: Zvezdanim tragom: Milena Pavlović-Barili: (Požarevac, 1909 - Njujork, 1945): Galerija SANU Beograd: July 17 - August 25, 2009. Galerija Milene Pavlović-Barilli, Fondacija Milenin dom. Požarevac 2009.

personal data
SURNAME	Pavlović-Barili, Milena
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Павловић-Барили, Милена (Cyrillic); Pavlović-Barilli, Milena
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Yugoslav painter and poet
DATE OF BIRTH	5th November 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH	Požarevac
DATE OF DEATH	March 6, 1945
Place of death	new York

[1] Bruno Barilli . Rodoni.ch

[serbianationalreview-2] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Dejan Djorić: Driven Away to Succeed. Milena Pavlović-Barili. (1909-1945), Truly Serbian, Truly International . In: Национална Ревија - Serbia National Review. 2009; Retrieved November 20, 2012.

[3] Illustration by Hot Pink With Cool Gray , 1940. On: Tumblr ; Retrieved November 20, 2012.

[4] Holdings of the Library of Congress

[5] Miodrag B. Protić: “Everything in Milena's life is extraordinary, unusual - its beginning, duration and end.” Quoted from: Dejan Djorić.

[6] Milena Pavlović-Barili. arte.rs; Retrieved November 20, 2012.

[7] Siglind Bruhn: Saints in the Limelight: Representations of the Religious Quest on the Post-1945 Operatic Stage. Pendragon Press 2003, p. 176. However, Bruhn also assumes, to a considerable extent, a suicide and not a riding accident.

[8] Jelica Milojković: Zvezdanim tragom: Milena Pavlović-Barili: (Požarevac, 1909 - Njujork, 1945): Galerija SANU Beograd: July 17 - August 25, 2009. Galerija Milene Pavlović-Barilli, Fondacija Milenin dom. Požarevac 2009.