100 | Kovačica » Kovačica R I TAM SRBI JE / RHYTHM OF SERBIA ive art world in the municipality of Kovačica, when painters from other areas andof differentnationalities began appearing in Kovačica. The Gallery of Naïve Art gradually became an independent institution of culture, hosting an annual exhibition of paintings by Kovačica naive artists each autumn, under the scope of the “Kovačički Oktober” event. Countless works by naïve painters from the municipality of Kovačica canbe found inmany world-renowned galleries and museums, while the Gallery itself has been toured by hundreds of thousands of fans of naive art, including many world-famous celebrities. Kovačica has welcomed the Rolling Stones, Alain Delon, Sophia Loren, ElizabethTaylor, BrigitteBardot, the Apollo11 crew, FrançoisMitterrand and Pelé, among many others. Slovaknaivepainting continues to live on from generation to generation, which is why it isn’t peculiar that the Babka Gallery, togetherwiththeMunicipalityofKovačica, has launchedan initiative for thisnaive art to be included the UNESCO list.TheRepublicof Serbia’s commissionforcooperationwithUNESCOis a proud and enduring patron of celebrations marking the International Native Language Day, which the BabkaFoundationhasorganisedeach year in the village Kovačica in Vojvodina, Serbia, since this UNESCO manifestation was first established 20 years ago.Through conservation andthenurturingof theirnative language, ethnic Slovaks fromKovačica havesuccessfullyandparadigmatically passedon their traditional knowledgeandspecial culturetofuturegenerations for twocenturies.Thenative language is part of a broader cultural assemblage of Slovaks in Kovačica, which represents oneof four central hubs of Yugoslavnaivepainting. “The native language and naive painting inKovačicafunctionnotonly interlinked, but also as a type of a culturecounterpoint, adyadof image andword, a proactive and attractive ideaonthe cognitiveandartistic liaison of the verbal and the visual.The Commissionof theRepublicofSerbia forcooperationwithUNESCOfirmly believesthat theInternationalNative Language Day promotes, all around theworld,multilingualismandmulticulturalism, which inspire solidarity among people andnations, based oncommunication, tolerance,understanding and dialogue,” said Goran Milašinović, President of the Commissionof theRepublic of Serbia for UNESCO. An exhibition of Slovak naïve paintings fromSerbia that was held to mark International Mother Language Day celebrations at the UNESCOHeadquarters in Paris was also supported by famous Slovak politician and diplomat Miroslav Lajčák. “Both Slovaks and Serbs can be proud of our mutual effort to cultivate the idea of tolerance, understanding and belonging through artistic expression (described as naïve in style, but certainly not in substance). Slovakia is proud of our descendants, whose ancestors left the motherlandof contemporarySlovakia and for centuries have retained the Slovak language, traditions and customs in their new home countries, including the SerbianVojvodina,” said Lajčák. He stressed that thiskindoffine artbecame famousaroundtheworld thanks in particular to Zuzana Chalupová,whosepaintingwas issuedas a UNICEF postcard in 1972, selling over two million copies worldwide. “Thanks to an authentic and uniqueartisticexpression, Serbiahas inscribed the naïve art of the Slovak painters from Kovačica on the National List of Intangible Cultural Heritage and I strongly believe that an inscriptionontheRepresentative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of UNESCO will soon follow,” said Lajčák, whose office wall is decoratedwitha largepaintingbyJánGozík fromKovačica.Aspecialdebtofgratitude, ashesays, shouldalsobepaidto Pavel Babka,whotirelesslypromotes thenaïve art of Kovačicaworldwide, bringing renown to Kovačica painters and Slovaks in Serbia. Istorija Slovaka u Srbiji Kovačica je osnovana 1802. godine. Slovaci su u ove krajeve došli na poziv austrougarskog cara da bi čuvali granicu između dve velike oblasti: Austrougarske i Osmanskog carstva. I do danas na ovim prostorima u Srbiji živi više do 52.000 Slovaka. THEHISTORYOF SLOVAKS INSERBIA Kovačicawas founded in 1802. Slovaks came here at the invitation of the thenAustro-Hungarian emperor to guard the border between theAustro-Hungarian and theOttoman Empire. They have remained resident here until the present day and the country is today home to more than 50,000Slovaks. Žetva (Zuzana Halupova) Harvesting (Zuzana Chalupova) Zima (Klara Babka) Winter (Klara Babka(
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