Petar Lubarda

In the year that marks the 60th anniversary of the Skopje earthquake, the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje is presenting the exhibition of Petar Lubarda, one of the most important Montenegrin artists and one of the most influential painters in the territory of the former Yugoslavia in the years after the WWII.

In October 1963, Petar Lubarda donated all 26 works from his exhibition in Niš – later exhibited in Skopje – making him one of the first and among the biggest donors to MSU – Skopje. The museum has a total of 52 works in its collection, including 40 seminal paintings in oil on canvas and cardboard, two watercolors, and ten drawings covering two and a half decades of the artist’s career (1942-1966).

Petar Lubarda (1907–1974) studied painting in Belgrade and Paris during the interwar period, and from 1932 until his death in 1974 he lived in Belgrade. His particularly expressive figurative style, bordering on associative abstraction, brought him widespread international recognition, including one of the three international painting prizes at the 1953 São Paulo Biennale.

After a long time, the audience will have the opportunity to see all of Lubarda’s works from the MoCA Collection, together with archival materials related to his exhibitions and donations. In times of crises, disasters, and military conflicts that burden the contemporary world, we think it is important to remember the concept of solidarity on which MoCA is based and the importance of international cooperation, which are the basis for advancing the social sphere and dealing with common challenges.

The curators of the exhibition are Blagoja Varoshanec and Vladimir Janchevski. Collaborators on the project are conservators Ljupcho Iljovski and Jadranka Milchovska. The design of the promotional material is by Iliana Petrushevska.

The exhibition is organized as a result of the joint cooperation of the Ministries of Culture of Montenegro and the Republic of North Macedonia, the Embassy of Montenegro and the Museum of Contemporary Art – Skopje under the patronage of the President of the Republic of North Macedonia.

The exhibition will be open until March 31, 2023.

The exhibition and the catalogue are realized with the financial support by the Ministry of Culture and Media of Montenegro