Belgrade Serbia Art Architecture

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

My longtime friend, former flatmate, and an artist in her own right, Dragana Adamov, is from Serbia. She recently invited me to go home with her (we both live in Firenze, Italia) to meet her family. So we rode a bus there. It was about a 15-hour ride during the afternoon and night, arriving around 5 or 6 a.m. Her parents picked us up in Belgrade, Serbia (their own name for the city is Beograd) and then we drove east a bit to arrive in their village.

Although most of our time was spent visiting local areas, traveling to other cities, or just spending time (and eating) with family and neighbors (and BOY, did we EAT!), Dragana and I did drive into Belgrade one evening for a bit of exploring. The images in this blog post were taken in Belgrade.

This first image was fun for me because my mother has almost always had long flowing blonde hair. We tend to do lots of “Cousin It” imitations, as well as laying our long hair over other people’s heads… silly fun. Still, this was a random sculpture that was quite unexpected in its placement and content. I really enjoy good site-specific sculpture.

Terra-cotta sculpture seems to be the most popular type here and Dragana told me that most of the clay that is used in this area comes from south Serbia. I am not sure if that includes the clay that the artists use, though, since I had been asking about all of the brick that is common in her family’s area for the construction of homes and businesses. In this large piazza there happened to be an exhibit of many terra-cotta sculptures, some quite large. In general, the style seemed primitive or naïve (please pardon me; I am horrible at classifying anything… I have always had a difficult time with labels). But I love the expressiveness of the sculptures I show you here. Frankly, I think that if the style had been more “classical” or “realistic” these works would have held less appeal or communication of the emotion they express so beautifully.

As we walked along, we saw a street performance happening along with a band playing behind the performer. I just like the cast shadows of the group of spectators, the sculpture (a statue of Prince Mihailo III on a horse in Republic Square, created in the mid 19th century), and the architecture of this area. We moved into a lovely park to get a bit of ice cream during the warm summer’s eve and I must say that Belgrade loves to have public fountains!

I took this last image because I just loved the simple and clean design of the building. It is elegant in its symmetry, lines, and light. I was told that this was a convent. I hope you enjoy these few shots of Belgrade, Serbia.

Thank you for reading!