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In most of the past centuries the Macedonian artists were following the international trends of the Byzantine artistic idiom. The battle for evolution and discovering has always surpassed the local frames. Some ensembles of wall painting, icon painting and applied art from Macedonia are highly evaluated in the European art history. The icon, in that aspect, is the quintessence of the artistic performance since it involves the deeply permeating spiritual layers, the aesthetic idea and the immediate address to the people.
That’s why the general panorama that follows the advancement of the Macedonian art of the 20th century is chronologically preceding the collection of icons, as a reminder of the achieved success. Although the displayed icons are not conceived by anthological method, they will offer the art lover an introduction to the style trends of the heroic times of Michail and Eutichius, the 14th century brothers Jovan and Makarij from Pelagonija, all the way to the artworks of Miak zografers in the time of the Rebirth. They confirm that over the centuries the artistic connections were continuously pulsating between Ohrid, Pelagonija, Skopje and Istanbul and Thessalonica, Athos, Venice and Central Europe. They confirm the artistic passion, the efforts to touch and reach one’s own artistic equivalent. In the times of slavery and resistance, the light arch on our artistic sky raised above us, confirming the triumph that the greatness of the spirit can not be confined.
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The painting of the Rebirth
The Macedonian cultural rebirth was developing persistently despite the exceptionally hard last decades of the Ottoman reign, until 1912. Noticeable contribution to it came from the Macedonian masons, woodcarvers and zografers. The painters Dimitar Andonov Papradiški, Gjorgi Zografski and Kosta Vangelov, made their works in accordance to those turbulent times. They kept making religious fresco and icon paintings, and united their respect for the tradition with careful application of models that were not part of the Byzantine art. Some of their artworks even approached the new European artistic idioms. It can be seen in the works with sacral motifs by these artists: in portraits and self-portraits (some made after photographs), landscapes, in the first folklore and “historical” scenes.
The art between the two world wars.
The Macedonian modern art was born in circumstances of total negation of the Macedonian national, linguistic and cultural identity. At that time several Macedonian artists were studying in Belgrade, Sophia and Bucharest, and afterwards specialized in Paris (Lazar Ličenoski, Nikola Martinoski, Dimitar Pandilov Avramovski) and Prague (Tomo Vladimirski).
Towards the modern idiom (1945-1960)
In the sixth decade the social environment was getting more and more favourable for the free artistic idioms which gave rise to some crucially turning processes in the fine art. They were based upon the Macedonian pre-war modern art of Pandilov, Ličenoski and Martinoski. The new styles were unstoppably breaking-through, along with the rise of the new post-war art generations. Educated outside of Macedonia, they surpassed the academic formulas through the models of Fauvism, Expressionism, Symbolism, Surrealism.
Macedonian contemporary art (1960 - 1980)
The occurrence of the abstract art at the turn from the 1960s to the 1970s was incited by the tendency of our environment to catch up with the contemporary social processes. Some painting motifs were reduced to finely shaped geometric details: in the icon-like works of Kondovski they were inspired by Byzantine, folklore and oriental motifs, while in the artistic ambient of Dušan Perčinkov by natural and urban situations. Other painters embraced the Informal Art, the non-narrative dialogue with themselves and with the world in their physical, social, ethnic and spiritual context.
In the 1980s we had the figurative fantasia (Vasko Taškovski, Vangel Naumovski), the aggressive expressionist distortions of the painting (Mazev, Čemerski), the carefully painted non-figurative compositions (Kalčevski).
Set for new researches (1980 - 1990)
The drastic historical turning-points in the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s and the radical revisions of many values in the spiritual and aesthetic sphere changed the entire life in Macedonia. Some prominent painters managed to follow the actual trends of that time with their works.
At the same time, a group of young artists harmonized their aesthetic attitudes with the contemporariness and with their own artistic context. In their new artistic discourse they reconsidered everything that preceded their time: the international and the Macedonian contemporary art became their raw material, processed with a cultivated (“traditional”) approach towards the works. |
