The exhibition “Milena Pavlović Barilli – Life and Dreams” by Violeta Tomić, senior curator of the Gallery of Milena Pavlović Barilli in Požarevac, is a chronological cross-section of Milena’s painting, from 1926 (school period) to 1944 (American commercial-illustrative period). Thanks to such a concept, the audience will be able to see the entire opus and her short and dynamic life, which is marked by schooling, travel, and constant creation in European capitals: from her native Požarevac and Belgrade to Munich, Paris, Rome, and finally, New York.
Milena Pavlović Barilli (Požarevac, November 5, 1909 – New York, March 6, 1945) was a Serbian painter and one of the most authentic figures of artistic Europe between the two wars. She has lived and worked in Paris since 1932, and in the United States since 1939, where she died prematurely at the age of 36. She regularly participated in the exhibitions of the pavilion “Cvijeta Zuzorić” and the art group “Lada”, and she successfully exhibited her works in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Europe, and later in America. However, due to her long stay and death abroad, she was almost forgotten in Serbia. Thanks, first of all, to her mother Danica Pavlović, on the initiative of Miodrag Protić, under the roof of the renovated old family house of Pavlović in Požarevac, the Gallery of Milena Pavlović Barilli was opened on June 24, 1962. Danica donated the art fund of her deceased daughter to the Serbian people with the obligation to preserve this legacy as a whole.