00:00Vjeroslava Svetlik is a painter from Kovacica, a small town in the region of Vojvodina in
00:06northern Serbia.
00:08Like most of the town's inhabitants, she belongs to Serbia's Slovak minority, the third-largest
00:14ethnic group in the country after Serbs and Hungarians.
00:18Kovacica is known as the cradle of naive painting in Serbia, an art form that showcases folk
00:23motifs and is executed in oil by artists with no formal training.
00:27I would say that painting is pure soul, I paint what I feel, what I see, what I feel and what
00:40I love at that moment.
00:42Painting is a great love for a painter.
00:46The paintings mostly depict aspects of rural life, although each artist gives his or her
00:51artwork a personal, original touch.
00:54While children and flowers feature strongly in Vjeroslava Svetlik's paintings, the colourful
00:59rooster is a dominant motif in the works of Pavel Hajko, one of the most experienced naive
01:04painters in the region.
01:25I like to change, so that I am not always the same.
01:29Last December, UNESCO added the naive art of Kovacica to its representative list of
01:35the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
01:38One of the people who backed the application was painter Pavel Babka, who, together with
01:42his wife Klara, has been exhibiting this kind of art worldwide for 30 years.
01:49Not a single area of art in Slovakia or in the world is listed on the UNESCO list.
01:58On the other hand, in our country we are the only element of minority culture that is listed.
02:08This is a great obligation.
02:10The colours in the paintings are always vibrant, and everyone who comes to the gallery and sees
02:17the paintings for the first time, meets the naive and comments that the paintings are
02:22truly optimistic, they are not dark, they are not gloomy, and I think that this is a great
02:28benefit for the public towards this kind of art.
02:34The most famous naive painter from Kovacica was Suzana Halupova, who passed away in 2001.
02:40February 5th, 2025, marks the 100th anniversary of her birth.
02:44Halupova created several works for charities, including a painting for UNICEF's headquarters
02:49in New York.
02:50She also gave lessons to another artist of this genre, Eva Hrkova.
02:55She taught me the basic colours, the positions, the figures.
03:02One of UNESCO's main conditions for adding any kind of intangible cultural heritage to
03:15its lists is that it should be passed on from generation to generation, which is why Pavel
03:21Babka teaches this style of painting to young artists.
03:32We can be proud that a small piece of Kovacica has become so well-known all over the world.
03:40So, with great responsibility and great love for everything I do, I will teach the younger
03:49generations what I can say and do.
03:53The addition of this art form to UNESCO's representative list of the intangible cultural
03:58heritage of humanity is proof that the naive paintings of Kovacica are still very much
04:04alive.
04:05In fact, this could be the start of a new chapter, the one where the world discovers
04:09these vibrant, colourful depictions of life in Kovacica.
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