Edgar Degas before Belgrade audience again

After 52 years, the collection of Edgar Degas' works of the National Museum has been put before the Belgrade audience again. The exhibit “Moments of Observation” has opened in the Gallery of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. This is a unique opportunity to view the works of one of the founders and most radical artists of Impressionism. The exhibition is open until September 15.

At the entrance to the Gallery, visitors are welcomed by blocks of text on the walls, informing them of Degas' work, Paris and Serbia's attempts to follow the modernist tendencies of the late 19th and the early 20th century.

– The first collector of modernist artworks was King Milan Obrenovic. During the 1890s, he was visiting Paris, where he collected several hundred works of the leading French Impressionist and post-impressionists. His collection was sold out several years after his death, at the initiative of his wife, Queen Natalie – says Dragana Kovacic, the author of the exhibition.

The exhibition features Degas' photography, a medium he was very passionate about.

– In the past few years, all the retrospectives have included photography as well, because he was introduced to the medium at the end of the 19th century and towards the end of his life and proved to be just as experimental in it as in his other artworks – explains Milanka Todic, co-author of the exhibition.

The exhibit displays two essentials characteristics of the great artist's lifework: drawing, as the basic artistic discipline, and an adherence to classical influences.

– The Edgar Degas collection is one of the most important collections, not just for the National Museum and Serbia, but on a wider scope – all the way to central and western Europe. This unique collection, which encompasses 29 paper artworks in fact features the most representative subjects he dealt with – Kovacic says.

The works of Edgar Degas in the National Museum belong to the collection of Erich Slomovic, a young collector tragically killed during the Second World War.

Narodni muzej Srbije Beograd

National Museum

SASA Gallery

Edgar Degas

Moments of Observation exhibition

Dragana Kovacic

Milanka Todic

Erich Slomovic