Ksenija Divjak – Between Reality and Myth

The exhibition “Ksenija Divjak – Between Reality and Myth” will be opened in the Gallery of the National Museum Kraljevo, on Thursday, December 12th, 2024, starting at 7 p.m., on the occasion of the centenary of the artist’s birth.

The core of the exhibition, whose authors are Suzana Novčić and Ljubiša Simović, museum advisors of the National Museum Kraljevo, consists of works from the museum’s Art Collection, of which there are 33 in total. At the end of 1995, after the death of Ksenija Divjak, the National Museum Kraljevo received thirteen works from the legacy of this artist, as a gift from the National Museum of Serbia. Two decades later, Dr. Olivera Radojković Čolović donated a valuable artistic legacy to the National Museum Kraljevo, which also includes twenty works by Ksenija Divjak.

In addition, in order to fully present the artist’s work, the exhibition also includes a significant number of works of art from other institutions: the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, the Gallery of Fine Arts – Rajko Mamuzić Collection in Novi Sad, the Modern Gallery in Valjevo and the Art Gallery “Nadežda Petrović” in Čačak.

Thanks to this, a complex and authentic world of Ksenija Divjak is brought to life: on the one hand, the thematic approach that she has cultivated throughout her life and which includes nudes, still lifes, themes of doubles, mythological themes and landscapes, and on the other hand, the media in which, in addition to oil on canvas, she most often worked, such as watercolours, pastels, drawings and gouaches.

She is one of the first postmodern artists of her time, who opted for the figure and figuration, derived from the models and canons of art history. The author uses them and brings them to life in her imagination, creating her own personal and artistic “museum without borders.”
Ksenija Divjak was born in 1924 in Ivanić Grad, Croatia. She lived in Zagreb until 1941, when she came to Belgrade with her family as a refugee. She enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1943, graduating in 1949. She was a member of Association of Fine Artist of Serbia, the “Belgrade Group” and the “Lada” Art Association. She travelled and studied in Italy, France, Greece and Spain, whose culture and art she was most attached to. She died in Belgrade in 1995.