We crossed the only bridge in Belgrade
over the Danube River – the old metal, heavy thing built in 1935. Once
on the other side of Belgrade we continued towards Pancevo city, well known for
its accident-prone factories which sometimes pollute the whole of Belgrade. As
it was Sunday, the day for the local antiques market, we couldn’t resist
stopping for a quick browse for a “good deal”. We didn’t get anything except an
old CD for 50p which worked until song number four. Regardless, we considered
it a good deal.
Crossing the Danube River means
entering the flat Pannonia Plain where you orientate yourself only by the next
tree or lonely house. Considering that the official alphabet in
Serbia is Cyrillic and that road signs are rare then that tree or house takes
on more importance during your journey. Nature at this time of year (May 2012)
generously painted everything in a lush green cloaking the trees and houses
from sight. Everything looked the same especially for four city girls.
Confused and tired by the oppressive heat we decided to stop along the way at
Salas, called Sekin Salas which means Sisters Ranch. If you want to experience
the real Serbia you should try to stay at one of the many ranches which offer a
combination of rural Serbia with good food, clean air and lots of activities –
horse riding, fishing, cooking classes…embroidery classes…During our hour stop
we managed to meet the loveable Rasha, a ginger corgi who we considered
stealing away, but after realising that Rasha has friends on the Ranch – three
cats, two goats, a pheasant, an over-protective chicken with eight yellow
chicks and two more dogs lazily asleep in the front garden - we decided that
Rasha had a better life than we did, so we left him in his natural
surroundings.
After refreshments and taking photos of
everything that represented the old, disappearing Serbia that was so generously
on display in the house, we continued driving towards Kovacica, a place well
known for its Slovak naive art.
The Museum of Naive Folk Art is
situated centrally on the main street. The Museum itself is very small but
very rich in the numbers of paintings they own so the exhibition keeps changing
all the time. The first one to strike you is a huge, colourful and lively
painting by Jan Glozik illustrating the 200 years since the Slovak people moved
from what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire to the eastern border, nowadays
Serbia, by order of the Emperor. The painting consists of 200 people
representing each year since they moved to this part of the world. If you have
a very good eye you can see a self-portrait of the painter incorporated into
the maze of colours.
The left side of the museum has an
exhibition of another famous naïve art painter, Martin Janos, whose paintings
emphasise the hands and feet and thereby the hard manual work on the farms of
the region. The third room is dedicated to the Queen of naïve art, Zuzana
Halupova. There are 31 paintings exhibited here, most of them oil on canvas.
She, as with Martin Janos, has a leitmotif which is that each
painting has a girl in a pink skirt somewhere in it. Zuzana never had kids of
her own and so she put one in every one of her paintings. She was member of the
children’s charity UNICEF and in 1974 she painted the UNICEF Christmas Card
which was sold worldwide. She left more than 1000 paintings to the
museum but due to the lack of the space only a certain number can be shown.
There are talks about a new, bigger Museum to be opened in a different
location.
Outside the Museum there is a courtyard
with three galleries, in one of them you can have your own portrait painted.
All the galleries are run by local painters who can tell you about local life
and how they have preserved their culture and traditions for over 200
years.
Mr Pavel Babka , a
successful painter who exhibits all around the world and is the owner of the
largest gallery, pointed out that even when a painter becomes worldwide successful,
he still stays in Kovacica, within very strong Slovak Community.
After a good three hours at this
artists’ colony we bought a couple of pictures that were most memorable to us,
and decided to sit outside the Museum on a bench colourfully painted in bright
flowers. Two local ladies dressed in Slovakian costume passed us slowly on
bicycles. The only sign reminding us that we were in Serbia and not
Slovakia was a road sign with the street name in Cyrillic.
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