The exhibition “Milena Pavlović Barilli – Life and Dreams” also contains an extremely interesting detail – the posthumous cast of Milena’s hands, written by Malvina Hoffman (1885 – 1966), American sculptor, painter, humanist and author of a poster depicting a Serbian soldier photographed at the hour of his death on the way to the Blue Tomb. During her work in the international branch of the Red Cross in New York during the First World War, Malvine, in contact with people from different countries, learned about the suffering of the Serbian people and the extent to which they needed help. Colonel Milan Pribićević, who was sent to America from the island of Corfu in those war years, with the task of gathering tens of thousands of volunteers and leading them back to liberate enslaved Serbian villages, motivated Hoffman to launch a campaign to help Serbia. She made a poster “Serbia needs your help” based on a photo of a Serbian soldier in a dying slave on the Greek island of Vid. Malvine Hoffman was a friend of Milena Pavlović Barilla, all these years during Milena’s stay in New York, from 1939 to 1945. She cast her hands on the deathbed, hoping to preserve her memory forever. Sophisticated and fragile Milena’s hands complete the picture of her short and dynamic life, in which, as a true nomadic artist, she created and lived.

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