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 Sombor divested itself of Islamic iconoclasm on September 12, 1687, and, naturally enough, the Christians hastened to make up for what they had missed. Until the 1740s when the patriarch Arsenije IV Jovanović Šakabenta issued the famous patent forbidding the work of inexperienced doodlers and favouring painters trained in the Sremski Karlovci school run by the Ukrainians Jov Vasiljevič and Vasilije Romanovič, traditional icon painters – zographs – had painted likeable icons for popular needs. Most traditional icon painters came from the south, from the three-border junction of Macedonia, Greece and Bulgaria, or that of Macedonia, Greece and Albania. The tradition of Byzantine art was perpetuated, but in addition to folk motifs, painting began to embrace features of Western art. Nevertheless, zographs survived throughout the eighteenth century, sometimes even into the first half of the nineteenth. A special place belongs to the famous icons painted on glass, with their tinge of folk art common to all the Balkan peoples under Ottoman rule and their glass backings imported from Germany. Such icons occurred in the broader area of the Metropolis of Sremski Karlovci. 1760, icon on glass, 65 × 47 cm
Arsenije Vujić: Virgin and Child, 1796, oil on canvas, 85 × 55 cm
BAROQUE
 Sombor became a free royal town in 1749, the date that marked the beginning of a prosperous period and introduced some dynamism into its artistic life. In 1771, Teodor Kračun, Jovan Isailović and Lazar Serdanović received the commission to paint an iconostasis for the Church of St George the Martyr. One of the greatest Serbian Baroque artists, Kračun was the master painter, which meant that he also decorated the lateral apses, the pulpit, the bishop`s throne, Christ’s grave, and painted two icons depicting the Great Feasts and an icon of the titular saint. In the 1860s his iconostasis was replaced with a new one, painted by Pavle Simić. The old, Kračun`s one, was consumed by fire at Kula in 1942. In the Franciscan Holy Trinity Church worked a painter from Osijek, Paul Kronoveter. His most important painting there is that of the Holy Trinity (1784). There is also an altar pala depicting the stigmatization of St Francis. A fine baroque Crucifixion by Matija Haniš, a Czech active in Osijek and Sombor, late 18th century, oil on canvas, 184.5 × 126 cm
CLASSICISM
For Sombor, the Enlightenment began in the year 1778, when the `Norma`, a school for training Serbian teachers, was opened. Pavel Djurković, an advocate of rationalism and Josephinism, author of numerous iconostases and portraits (the most famed perhaps being that of turbaned prince Miloš), painted the iconostasis for the Church of St John in 1809, the portraits of Justinijan Jovanović (1820), Avram Konjović (1822) and many others. The greatest painter of Serbian Classicism, Arsenije Teodorović, portrayed two professors of the teachers school, which had commissioned them. Those of Avram Mrazović and Uroš Nestorović. Arsenije Teodorović: Avram Mrazović, founder of the oldest Serbian institution for training teachers, 1820, oil on canvas, 70 × 53 cm
ART OF MIDDLE CLASSES – BIEDERMEIER, ROMANTICISM
 In the course of the nineteenth century, middle classes grew stronger. They were the most reliable sponsors of art works, and almost none of the Sombor bourgeois families failed to furnish their homes with family portraits, large, medium and small. Biedermeier was born, comfortable, cosy and solid, as evidenced by plentiful portraits. But let us begin with the redecoration of the Church of St George the Martyr carried out by Pavle Simić of Novi Sad between 1869 and 1874. The restoration of the church was initiated by Georgije Branković, a young priest, subsequently Serbian patriarch, a generous patron of arts and literature, and one of the initiators of historicism in art. By virtue of its monumental and effective props, this work of Simić`s anticipated the devotional painting of Uroš Predić and Paja Jovanović. Simić`s arrival was seen in Sombor as a first-rate event: `The day after Christmas the Council contracted with a skilled and trained painter of Novi Sad, Mr Simić, who is going to adorn our cathedral…`There ensued a series of painters, more or less successful in their trade, the choice having been dependent on their patrons` social position and wealth.
Pavle Simić: St George, oil on wood, 200 × 120 cm. 
The period between the two world wars was marked by two painters capable of linking the plain of Vojvodina and its distinctive atmosphere with the prevailing European artistic developments. Ivan Radović, an artist with his personal style verging on naïve painting, inspired by folk textiles, icons on glass and ornamental patterns on Easter eggs, but also by a `School of Paris` from Matisse to Bonnard, lived in Sombor between 1922 and 1927. Milan Konjović went through a number of phases, experimenting with Post-Impressionism, Cézanne, Cubism and Constructivism, only to attain his original colour-ruled expression to which he remained faithful till his death.
After World War Two, the Town Museum was founded, and in 1961 the Art Gallery was opened, both greatly contributing to the fostering and presentation of art in Sombor and its environs.
THE `MILAN KONJOVIĆ` GALLERY IN SOMBOR
In 1966 an art gallery has been opened and named after Milan Konjović (Sombor 1898 - Sombor 1993), one of the top painters of Serbian and Yugoslav modern art, whose exhibitions in Paris gained him recognition as early as the 1930s. Ever since its opening, the Gallery has been arranging exhibitions of the works of Milan Konjovic that the artist bestowed on his hometown. Originally comprising 500 works (oils, pastels, water-colours, drawings and a tapestry, made between 1913 and 1963), the collection has more than doubled over the years. Owing to the painters ever-new gifts, it presently includes 1060 works thereby offering a cross-section of Milan Konjovics oeuvre from 1913 to 1990, when, at the age of ninety-two, he ceased painting.
Such a rich collection has permitted a dynamic and diversified presentational activity, both in the Gallery itself and elsewhere. In its own halls, the Gallery has so far set up 59 well-received exhibitions (11 defined in terms of chronology, with about 150 works on display each, and 48 thematic ones). In collaboration with other galleries or museums 140 exhibitions of Milan Konjovićs works have been organized elsewhere, e.g. the anthological one in Budapest (1971), or those in Prague, Paris (Grand Palais, 1985) and Moscow (1987), where, despite the most rigorous selection, the works from the Gallery`s collection prevailed.
The Gallery is also a centre for collecting, processing and studying documentary material relevant to the painter s artistic personality, and it has by now gathered a rich collection of data in various formats: written, photo, film and video records. To its versatile publication activity testify several monographs on the great painter, numerous catalogues (6 monographs, 61 catalogues and one collection of works), as well as series of, or individual, prints, posters, and colour reproductions.
Milan Konjović, `My atelier`, oil on wood, 80,8 x 65,2.
`The Autumn of Visual Arts`, an event (1961–1972) that became institutionalized (1972–1996), used to assemble the most prominent artists of the former SFRY for its annual exhibitions of paintings and its triennials of drawings. The resulting acquisitions form one of the most reputable collections in the country, its major works being on permanent display in the Town Museum Gallery (Zora Petrović, Marko Čelebonović, Mića Popović, Ferdinand Kulmer, Edo Murtić, Branko - Filo Filipović, Vladimir Veličković, Boris Jesih, Mileta Prodanović etc).
Fortunately, the painter`s alley is not a blind one. Sombor can still boast the artists of all generations and of more than just local stature: Sava and Dragan Stojkov, Pavle Blesić, Zoran Stošić Vranjski, Dušan Mašić, Vladimir Spasić etc.
Dragan Rakić (member of the artists’ association Absolutely), from the cycle CIRCULAR–SQUARE, mixed media, 41× 41 cm and 43× 43 cm
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