Serbia: The naive art of the Slovak minority of Kovacica

DW (English)

With their striking folk motifs and bright colors, the naive paintings of Kovacica in Serbia have gained international recognition. The practice has even been added to UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Transcript

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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