Paintings from the Legacy of Lepa Perović to the city of Lazarevac at the Zepter Museum

On Tuesday, September 23, 2025, at 6:30 p.m., the exhibition of paintings from the Legacy of Lepa Perović to the city of Lazarevac will be opened at the Zepter Museum, as part of the three-day World Conference on Science and Art for Sustainability.

It is a unique global event devoted to all branches of science and art, gathering the superb world experts from the World Academy of Art and Science, the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and The Club of Rome among others, which is taking place in Belgrade on September 22–24 this year. The Host of the meeting is the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA), and the Co-Hosts are the Alliance of National and International Science Organizations for the Belt and Road Regions (ANSO) and UNESCO.

On this occasion, upon mutual satisfaction, and for the first time, cooperation between the Modern Gallery of the Cultural Center in Lazarevac and the Zepter Museum was achieved. Lepa Perović’s valuable legacy comprises of 60 artworks, paintings and sculptures, mostly by Serbian artists of the 20th century, which she has bestowed to the city of Lazarevac in 1970.  The exhibition at the Zepter Museum includes a selection of 24 paintings especially by the artists whose artworks are represented in the permanent exhibition of the Zepter Museum, and which the visitors can view on display. The selection includes paintings of Zora Petrović, Milan Konjović, Milo Milunović, Ivan Radović, Nedeljko Gvozdenović,  Ljubica Sokić, Predrag Milosavljević, Petar Lubarda, Lazar Vujaklija, Lazar Vozarević, Slavoljub Bogojević, Majda Kurnik, Miodrag B. Protić, Mladen Srbinović and Vojislav Stanić.

Lepa Perović entrusted the selection of works for her rich art collection to the famous Serbian artist and art theorist, Miodrag B. Protić, one of the initiators and founders of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade. By style, the works can be classified into three groups: coloristic expressionism, poetic realism and intimist painting, and post-war (World War II) new tendencies in Serbian painting – new realism, geometric painting, enformel and similar directions that developed during and after the 1950s on the Serbian art scene. By its conception, this collection represents an intersection and sublimation of currents and styles in art, which appeared in former Yugoslavia in the middle of the last century. Coloristic expressionism can be seen on the canvases of Zora Petrović, Milan Konjović, even Milo Milunović, although his work is classifiied in some other painting directions. The second stylistic unit consists of the works of Ivan Radović, Nedeljko Gvozdenović, Ljubica Sokić, Predrag Milosavljević, which belong to the domain of the poetic realism and intimism, a trend that appeared on the Serbian art scene around 1930. The third group includes works created in the middle of the 20th century and later, which according to their stylistic characteristics can be classified under what is called the new tendencies in painting from the 1950s onwards: the canvases of Lazar Vozarević, Slavoljub Bogojević, Miodrag B. Protić, Lazar Vujaklija and Vojislav Stanić bring us an insight into the directions that appeared on the Yugoslav art scene after the 1950s.

Leposava Lepa Perović was born in a large family in 1911 in Mašići, near Banja Luka, in the then Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her great grandmother was Marija Petrović Perović, the sister of Petar II Petrović Njegoš and the wife of Serdar Andrija Perović. She completed high school and the Teachers’ School in Banja Luka in 1931. Before World War II, she was employed as a teacher in several places in Yugoslavia, including a village by Mionica, near Lazarevac. During the War, she actively participated in the People’s Liberation Movement in Yugoslavia. After the War, among other things, she was a representative of the Kolubara district, which included Lazarevac, in the National Assembly of Serbia. She was also the Director of the Gallery of Frescoes in Belgrade. From 1946, she was living with Konstantin Koča Popović, a famous Yugoslav politician and diplomat, national hero and author. She died in 2000 in Belgrade.