Sava Šumanović Gallery Sid
Sava Šumanović, the most important Serbian painter of the first half of the 20th century, spent his youth and last days of life in Šid, where his hometown gallery is located nowadays. Gallery of Sava Šumanović was established in 1952 as a gift from Persida Šumanović, the painter’s mother, with the aim to present the town of Sid with 417 of her son’s paintings, as well as the house in which they are exhibited. Vesna Burojević, art historian and director of the Gallery proudly stresses that Gallery of Sava Šumanović possesses majority of the famous painter’ s works.
Sava Šumanovic was born in 1896 in a wealthy and respected bourgeois family, in the town of Vinkovci. Soon after his birth, the family moved to Šid. The most important event in his career was certainly going to Paris at the end of the 1920s. The half year spent in the studio of the famous art professor Andre Lhot, who considered Sava Sumanovic as his most talented student and whose artistic direction was post-cubism, forever changed the life of the young artist. He became the Serbian painter who worked in a special kind of late Constructivism, much like Andre Lhot – in the reflection of Cubism. All of that made Sava Šumanovic a pioneer of modern trends in Serbian painting, which became modern largely due to Šumanovic’s ability to accept and understand changes in art. Full of enthusiasm and new revelations, he experienced disappointment in 1921 at his first exhibition in Zagreb, after his return from Paris. The provincial and conservative audience in Zagreb did not understand modern art. After return from Paris Sava Šumanović painted nudes and the nearby landscapes of Šid which remained dominant for the rest of the painters life. War came to the small town of Sid which became a part of the Independent State of Croatia. Cyrillic alphabet was forbidden and Sava Šumanović, out of protest refused to sign himself and marked his paintings only by the year of their origin. On Assumption, 28 August 1942 Sava Šumanović was arrested and taken to Sremska Mitrovica along with 120 locals where they were executed by pro-fascist collaborators. That was how the life of one of the greatest Serbian painters of all time tragically ended. What was left behind was a lot or prepared painting material and paintings….
The most famous paintings of Sava Šumanovic belong to the peak of the modern Serbian art, “Breakfast on Grass”, “Bathers” and “Drunken Boat”.
