by
Pavel Babka
founder of the gallery

My village Kovačica has been established in 1802. We are, now, mostly the sixth and seventh generation of Slovakian immigrants, which have been sent out by Maria Theresia to guard the border of Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Imperia.

Since the neighboring villages, at a distance of 5-10 kilometers, are inhabited by Serbs, Hungarians, Romanians, Romas and members of other ethnic groups, our ancestors have taught us respecting their customs, faith, costumes. When they were celebrating their holidays we didn't talk about business with them, respecting that day we didn't make any trades in their villages. We were mutually respecting each holiday, we theirs and they ours.

They have proved us as well, that from our neighboring villages, which are of different customs and faith, we also may learn how to till the soil better, how to raise better cattle, how to learn a trade better.

But at the same time, they have keep talking from generation to generation that we should not forget our native language, our faith, customs, costumes, respecting the elders, that we should work on each one day of our life (to keep what today is probably called identity).

Such circumstances have probably influenced that the naive art painting was arising first in Kovačica, then later on in the neighboring villages as well, and after that even attaining world fame.

When in 1991 in Europe great changes are appearing, we experience them as a challenge and found our family business, a private gallery, which we name by the family name Babka. I remember how all that was directed with suspicion at that time, since during the last 50 years in our circles leveling has been pleaded. The aim by founding the gallery was to present to the world what our Kovačicans are painting, but also other naive art painters from all over Serbia as well.

The collection of paintings, we are presenting here, was assembled from 1991 - 2006. The strongest influence on forming the collection was given to me by my wife Klara, my son Ivan, but by many admirers of naive art at home and abroad as well. The exhibition at the European Commission, the Berlaymont Building, motivated us to complement our collection of the painters from Vojvodina also with artworks of painters from all over Serbia, to present the Moravska škola (Morava School) as well.

By attempting to increase the collection with artworks of painters of the Pannonia depression, we shall make it possible, for the same one, to attain an international character and, that way, also one further step, although a small one probably, on the path of getting the idea of a united creative Europe true.

by
Emina Ćirić,
art historian

Even at the beginning of the new century one finds the same question: what did the public recognize and like in naive art? In this age, when the living conditions, potentials and wavering of contemporary world offer less joy and frankness, every sparkle recognized by the one caught in the spell of a painting ignites the feeling of love between the work and its observer.

The Gallery of Naive Art was founded in Kovačica in 1955. It keeps a representative collection of painters from that region and organizes regular annual exhibitions each October.

Fifteen years ago, Pavel Babka opened a private gallery to show the works of naive artists from Vojvodina, primarily from Kovačica, Padina, Aradac, Uzdin, Subotica and Zrenjanin. He frequently refreshes his collection with the works by other artists from Serbia, such as Sava Stojkov, Janoš Mesaroš, Miroslav Berbatović, etc. And from this collection, financed by private and not public funds, artworks have gone to galleries on all continents. First of all to the exhibitions in the International Monetary Fond Gallery in Washington, D.C. and New York (1996, the Expo in Seville (1992) and Lisbon (1996), Hanover (2000) and Aichi in Japan (2006). The Babka Gallery has cooperation with the United Nations, UNICEF, UNESCO, OESC, IMF, World Bank for Development, Inter-American Bank in Washington, European Bank for Reconstruction, and other institutions engaged in cultural programmes.

These exhibitions are not only shows of works by renowned naive masters from Kovačica and other places; they have extensive accompanying materials, catalogues, posters, reproductions, as well as documents of lasting value. Such an investment in future is also the care taken of the young who are willing to continue the tradition of the Kovačica artists. Among other things, they are encouraged to revive and cherish old trades, traditional art, and apply painterly skills to objects for everyday use.

This selection and exhibition is not just a display of the best works by artists from Kovačica and other places in Serbia, but a cross-section of current activities of about eighty painters. There are works by the best-known and most deserving masters, but also works by the young, from Kovačica and the surrounding villages. While some works are worthy of museum collections, others are represented with their modest endeavours. The exhibition is a reflection of what the artists from the Kovačica circle and associated painters produce today and what they can offer at the beginning of the new century. It is the same artistic charge, the same origins, but also a sensibility changed as much as life has changed in the last fifteen years.

The catalogue lists painters by years of birth, because that is the most proper order. Every other approach would favour some and underestimate others. Their rank in art will not easily be judged in our time.

Although no art theorist or art critic has not been able to define naive art properly or to determine its essential meaning, there still remains the fact that this branch of contemporary visual art has persisted and survived as original, without any conventions or obligations, rejecting rules and canons, following its own aesthetic of spontaneity and inspired creation.

The step forward was made when the official art and art criticism began to accept naive art as a necessity and stopped renouncing it. Such a position was won by anthological works of those artists who were able to transfer onto canvas true life and emotions, and find the way to the hearts of the public. Those were enchanting works of tranquility, colourful simplicity and a visual quality that no critic could fail to recognize. Anyhow, art cannot be faked. On the canvases of artists from the Kovačica circle, art is not incidental, not the product of a unique moment, and this exhibition proves that fact.