PETAR ZARIĆ

Exhibition opening: Tuesday, 15 August 2023 at 7 pm

Authors of the exhibition and catalog: Snežana Negovanović, Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of the City of Belgrade and Dobrila Ivanić Zdravković, granddaughter of Petar Zarić.

Organizers: Museum of Applied Art in cooperation with the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of the City of Belgrade.

 

During the work on the restoration of the Central Tower of the Old Fairgrounds, the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of the City of Belgrade came into contact with the descendants of Petar Zarić, whose rich heritage included a preserved album with photographs taken by Zarić personally while decorating the interior of the Central Pavilion and the Nikola Spasić Endowment within the complex of the newly built Belgrade Fairgrounds in 1937.

The exhibition “Petar Zarić, Expert Drawing with Detailing, Woodworking, Wood Interior Design” presents an exceptional personality endowed with many abilities: an excellent draftsman, a connoisseur of professional theoretical training, and an imaginative creator in wood who knew the styles, quality and constitution of wood and the processing technology in detail, as well as being an inventor and lecturer at the Belgrade-based Academy of Applied Arts. He has organized many exhibition rooms within Fairgrounds in Serbia and other countries, creating and making furniture for various purposes. Also, according to the exhibition catalog, he has crafted iconostases and church furniture for the needs of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

The exhibition is being organized on the occasion of the 120^th anniversary of the birth and 50^th anniversary of the death of Petar Zarić and presents hitherto unknown creative works of this author: sketches, projects and photos of artworks, pieces of furniture and other interior elements.

Bearing in mind that the European Commission has declared this year the European Year of Skills, which officially began on 9 May 2023, putting skills at the center of interest and with the aim of promoting and investing in education and training to help people to adapt to the needs of the labor market and technological changes, this kind of exhibition offers a series of ideas and solutions for the development of craftsmanship and skills for the new needs of today’s world. At the same time, the Petar Zarić exhibition put together by the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments of the City of Belgrade draws attention to endangered material and non-material craft heritage (heritage crafts) necessary in the overall preservation of cultural heritage, but also as a possible incentive for the improvement of individuals precisely in these traditional forms of craftsmanship.

Petar Zarić (1902-1972) completed his primary school and gymnasium education, and also his carpentry trading, in his native Valjevo, and in the years between the two World Wars, he continued his schooling at several vocational schools abroad (in Heidelberg, Germany, in Hradec Kralove in Czechoslovakia, Nuremberg in Germany, etc.). In Belgrade, he built a house and a carpentry workshop where he continued to create all his life (Petar M. Zarić, furniture designer and design-carpenter, 12 Zvečanska Street). Zarić worked in the School of Applied Arts (later the Academy of Applied Arts) from 1947, at the Department of Architecture and Design as a lecturer in Professional Drawing with Detailing and Wood Technology, until his retirement in 1965.

Author of the photographs: Dragana Udovičić