Karling klub Vukovi

NUSANTARA opened the season of its travels scheduled for 2019 with an excursion across Southern Banat – the chosen destination for Saturday, March 30th was Kovačica and Idvor.

In Kovačica, at the Gallery of Naive Art, opened in 1955 as the first „Gallery of Rural Painters“ in former Yugoslavia, the excursionists were first welcomed by Mrs. Zuzana Holubekova, student of the renowned Zuzana Halupova. At the core of naive art itself in Vojvodina, members of the NUSANTARA Association of Friendship between Serbia and Indonesia had a chance to hear a first-hand story about Zuzana Halupova, artist who had generated the School of Naive Art from Kovačica and passed the glory of Kovačica worldwide. Mrs. Holubekova herself has already artistically formed 32 pupils; by now, she has had 45 independent exhibitions across Europe. She is especially proud of the fact that 40 of her paintings are exhibited at the Ethno Museum in Bratislava, part of the Slovak Cultural Centre, selected on a basis of competent opinions of art critics and ethnologists.

This Saturday, NUSANTARA also visited the gallery of Mr. Jano Čeh, art lover whose collection gathers the best paintings produced by naive artists from Kovačica, known and established worldwide. The private 90 m² space, transformed into a gallery, does not contain any work of Mr. Čeh; he’s limited his involvement to conservation of the best done paintings coming from the School of Naive Art from Kovačica, gathered along 50 years of his collaboration with naive artists. It is also impossible to buy the exhibited works; solely books, postcards and documentary materials following the work of painters belonging to the School of Naive Art from Kovačica are on sale.

After a short visit paid to the Evangelical church in Kovačica, members of the NUSANTARA Association of Friendship between Serbia and Indonesia visited Jan Nemček’s violin workshop, where they heard Mr. Nemček’s inspired story about the process of manufacturing stringed instruments. The craftsman, whose mentor in the past had been Lilija Tanasijević, daughter of the king’s violin-manufacturer and the first female violin-manufacturer in Serbia, showed his guests pieces of ribbed maple, used in the process of making violins of the best quality in the world, and demonstrated himself the sound of a violin producing 7.000 vibrations in a second!

The next stop of the Saturday’s itinerary was the Sakule village; in Sakule the traditional „Shepherd’s Day“ fair was on, also known for not such a frequent attraction – a donkey race.

A visit to Idvor, put more precisely, to the memorial complex dedicated to Mihajlo Pupin, was especially touching and instructive. The complex includes the house where the renowned and internationally reputed scientist from Idvor was born, restaured in 2004, „The People’s House Mihajlo I. Pupin“, built with his own financial resources and evoted to Idvor, aimed at becoming the centre of knowledge, the building of the old school, where Pupin had initiated his schooling, nowadays transformed into a museum, and an Orthodox church where the most celebrated inhabitant of Idvor had been baptized.

This year marks the 100-year jubilee of the Paris peace conference, in which Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin directly participated, being a witness to it at the same time. The priceless merits of the internationally reputed Serbian scientist for the establishment of the state borders of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians have been well-known, which was an additional motive for NUSANTARA to open the season of its travels precisely with the visit to the memorial complex of Mihajlo Pupin. Mrs. Jelena Kalin, who acted as a guide to members of the NUSANTARA Association of Friendship between Serbia and Indonesia through the complex this Saturday, gave NUSANTARA „The Scientist, Professor, Inventor and Patriot Mihajlo Idvorski Pupin“ monograph as a gift, printed in 2017 and unique for a variety of reasons. The authors of the monograph are Dr Dragoljub Martinović and Dr Dragoljub Cucić, one of only two experts in Serbia holding a Ph.D. in the domain of the history of science.

The excursion continued with a visit to the Banat village of Padina, in which Slovaks make a 98% of the population, in which also lives Ján Bačúr, an 82-year old painter who has produced 2.820 oil paintings along his 62-year long career. Mr. Bačúr has had 64 independent exhibitions in his artistic trajectory. President of Serbia Aleksandar Vučić honoured him „for extraordinary credits in cultural activities, especially within the area of painting“ on February 11th 2018. Besides paintings, Mr. Bačúr has been writing a book about all painters from the Kovačica municipality. He’s been keeping a record of everything happening in the field of painting within a year; each year gets its own book, which implies that the naive artist from Padina has also produced 37 books of a significant volume. Slovaks also honoured him for his unstoppable work; Ján Bačúr, therefore, got an acknowledgement from the president of the Slovak Cultural Centre, as well as a medal for his life contribution from Miroslav Lajčak, foreign affairs secretary of Slovakia.

The Saturday’s excursion ended with a tour of the city of Pančevo and panoramic sightseeing of the town, in company of Aleksandar Pavković, local tourist guide.

Biljana Đorđević

Photo: Oliver Dimić