Olga Jevrić: Proposals for Monuments

Olga Jevrić, a Serbian artist who was instrumental to the development of abstract sculpture in Yugoslavia, could evoke the monumental within the smallest of sculptures.

This focused exhibition is the first solo showing of Jevrić’s work in Britain. Taking models and small sculptures made from the 1950s to the early 1970s, it charts the development of her original sculptural idiom across a period of twenty years.

At the beginning of her practice, Jevrić produced figures, portraits and reliefs, focusing on realistic representation. However, by the mid-1950s, she had moved away from figuration to pursue an abstract sculptural vocabulary, of which there was no previous tradition in Yugoslavia.

Jevrić embarked on an exploration of mass, volume and texture, investigating relationships between solid matter and empty space. She worked principally with a mixture of cement and iron dust to create modelled masses pierced and articulated with iron rods and nails.

Jevrić made numerous small works, some of which were conceived as independent artworks, others as models for large sculptures. Among the latter was a series of ‘Proposals for Monuments’ created in response to national competitions for public memorials, which were key sculptural events in this period, intended to commemorate the struggles of the Yugoslav peoples during the Second World War.

The first in the series was submitted to a competition to design a memorial to the fallen soldiers in Prokuplje in which Jevrić was awarded first prize in 1951. It drew upon the forms of Stecci, medieval Balkan tombstones sited in wild, open landscapes that were exposed to the elements.

Whilst this model was never realized, and few of Jevrić’s works were created on a large scale or placed in an open-air setting, the idea of Stecci and of the memorial echo through her oeuvre. This exhibition includes a version of the Prokuplje Memorial of 1951, and one of six exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1958.

These small works are often presented on slabs of stone, gathered by the artist from the hillside around Belgrade Fortress that overlooks the city, bringing the landscape into the gallery space.

Jevrić’s sculptures are entirely abstract, but the forms are rich in metaphorical overtones and highly expressive, with their surfaces textured and pitted as if shaped by natural forces.