Saturday is museum day for me, or at least part of the day. This Saturday I visited two museums with my children. Although they are small, they are very interested in museums and curiously observe and ask questions.
I have always been fascinated when I look into the home of a great artist and imagine his life there. I opened the heavy door and walked down the long hallway to the second entrance, which was marked Paja Jovanovic Museum.
Paja Jovanovic was a famous Serbian painter who lived for 98 years in two centuries, the 19th and 20th. He left behind famous works of art that I am always happy to see and I will share them with you today.
At the end of the long hallway, we reached the front door of his building.
We went up to the fourth floor.
And entered his apartment, which today has been turned into a museum.
The apartment consists of several rooms.
It is a salon-style old apartment with authentic, stylish furniture.
And the apartment was as classy and elegant as he looked as well. They say that he was not one of those artists who spent their lives in anonymity and became famous after their death, and there were a lot of such artists at that time. Paja Jovanovic was an eminent and respected gentleman who studied at the Vienna Academy and spent part of his life in London.
He was a painter of realism and it is a real pleasure to look at his works of art which have a psychological coloring.
He liked to paint portraits. While looking at them you have the impression that they will come alive because they seem completely real.
He liked to paint beautiful women. I like how they looked back then. They were very classy. Like Mrs. Gartenberg in the photo below.
I felt like all these lovely ladies were in the room.
And the special part of the apartment is the salon room with a large mirror. It is a place where ladies came to him and posed while he painted them.
He also liked to paint nudes. And he liked to paint his wife the most.
One of his most famous works is the Coronation of Emperor Dusan, a famous Serbian ruler.
His apartment was expensively decorated for that time. There are a lot of stylish ornaments everywhere you turn.
My son liked the chessboard table because he is a big chess fan.
In the end, we went out to the terrace to see what the view was like.
The last picture he painted was not a portrait but a still life in the photo below. It is known that he was a happy man and that he loved life. He said that he just doesn't like how fast it goes. But he was lucky that even though his life was passing quickly, it lasted a long time. Until his 98th year.
Art always finds a way to reach you and inspire you. I enjoyed this visit.
Thank you very much for reading.
The images and writing are original and mine.
Jelena