On 14 March, an exhibition by Predrag Todorović titled “Paintings 2023 – 2024” was opened in front of numerous guests at the Josip Račić Gallery. Following an introductory speech by Branko Franceschi, the director of the National Museum of Modern Art, the artist’s previous works as well as his recent pieces selected for presentation in the exhibition were introduced by Klaudio Štefančić, the NMMA senior curator and head of the Collection of Watercolours, Drawings and Prints and the New Media Collection, who is also the curator of the exhibition and the author of the accompanying catalogue text.
Among the first to admire Todorović’s large-scale paintings in mixed media, which the cultural audience of Zagreb will have the opportunity to view at the Josip Račić Gallery until 7 April, were painters Grgur Akrap, Jagor Bučan, Tomislav Buntak, Fedor Fischer, Duje Jurić, Željko Lapuh, Ivica Malčić, David Maljković, Mak Melcher with his wife, the theatre, film, and television actress Mia Melcher, Zoltan Novak, Izvor Pende, Marijana Pende, Nika Radić, Damir Sokić, Zlatan Vehabović, Roberta Vilić, sculptor Nikola Vrljić, as well as art historians Vanja Babić, Feđa Gavrilović, Krunoslav Kamenov, Nataša Ivančević, Iva Körbler, Josip Joško Tešija, Leila Topić, Janka Vukmir... and the artist’s friends from the Department of Culture of the City of Rijeka.
Nikolina Radić Štivić, the deputy head of the City Office for Culture, International Relations and Civil Society of the City of Zagreb, also attended the opening.

(...) An equally useful question in the interpretation of Todorović’s painting is “What can painting depict today?” Modern artists have discovered new modes of expression, but over time, their potentials have become conventional. As often emphasised by Charles Harrison, British artist and theorist, abstract expressionist painters have left behind serious issues related to questions of authenticity and originality. These issues were systematically analysed within the framework of Conceptual art, for example, in the works of Yves Klein, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Morris, and others, or in the domestic context, in the works of Braco Dimitrijević, Goran Trbuljak, Boris Demur, and others. Thus, from the perspective of 1980s postmodern art, there is no difference between abstract painting and Conceptual art, as both tendencies disregard figurative representation and insist on universal artistic problems and values.
Taking into account that Todorović received the Adolf Gottlieb award for his artistic work in 2021 from a renowned American art foundation, it is possible to view his activity as a kind of renewal of modernist artistic principles within the constellation of contemporary culture, primarily the universal language of abstraction and the cosmopolitan nature of art (cosmopolitanism as a phenomenon that is completely opposite to globalization). (..) Klaudio Štefančić, from the text in the exhibition catalogue.

Photo: Tanja Tevih © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb, 2024