The Symbolist Works of Miho Marinković and Their Reception in Serbia

Abstract

The paper analyses the symbolist works in the under-researched opus of painter Miho Marinković. Trained at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts, he is primarily known as a painter of intricate themes that can be categorized as late 19th-century symbolism. In 1904, he settled in Belgrade and became an active participant in the cultural scene of the Serbian capital. In 1911, Marinković’s paintings were exhibited in the Pavilion of the Kingdom of Serbia at the International Exhibition in Rome. His symbolist oeuvre covers the standard themes of symbolist painting, such as Medusa, Lucifer, or The Sinner, which speaks both of the artist’s personality and of the eclectic turn of the century. Symbolism in Marinković’s work reflects his training in Munich, which in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the European centre of somnambular themes and artistic experiments. In this paper, his oeuvre has been considered in the context of general symbolist structures, with particular references to the Munich symbolism. Some reviews of Marinković’s symbolist paintings have been pointed out, which testify to the history of the reception of his work in the Kingdom of Serbia in the early 20th century. The positive reception of Marinković’s paintings in the Serbian setting is evident from the fact that as many as thirty-five of his works have been included in the holdings of the National Museum in Belgrade.