Olga Jevrić (born 1922) (not to be confused with Olga Jancic) is a famous Serbian sculptor, one of the many renowned female sculptors emerging from Serbia.
Olga Jevrić was born in Belgrade in 1922. In 1941 she graduated from high school, but was rejected on the entrance exam of the studies at the Sculpting department of the Academy of Fine Arts. The following year, she successfully enrolls both the Academy of Fine Arts, and the Academy of Music in Belgrade (both now faculties).
In 1948 Jevrić graduated at the sculpting department of AFA, in the class of prof. Sreten Stojanović. She got an M.A. degree in 1949 (special course) in the class of the same professor (Sreten Stojanovic). She also studied art history in Belgrade.
She was accepted as a member of Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SASA) and SLUJ in 1950.
Her first exhibition was in 1948, and since then she had numerous exhibitions in country and abroad. She received many awards.
Olga Jevrić was the first new donator to Belgrade Heritage House; she signed a Gift Contract on 10 February 2006 and bequeathed 44 of her sculptures made in iron-oxide, iron, cement, terracotta and filmed plaster.
The core of the bequest, except some of the early portraits and a few works from the late phase of creation, is made of sculptures from the first individual exhibition of Olga Jevrić presented at ULUS Gallery at Terazije in Belgrade back in 1957.This exhibition, which was very controversial at that time in our art scene, characterized Olga Jevrić as a sculptor, who had severed from interpretation of reality tradition quite bravely and radically, first among Jugoslavian and Serbian sculptors. She focused at the very essence of the sculpture finding out the impulse for individual approach and forming of her unique expression.
With her presence in our art scene almost six decades long, Olga Jevrić is an outstanding figurure with her authentic modernism and a special vigour of her artistic expression.Sculptures of Olga Jevrić possess universal formal and metaphoric significance told in an expressive manner in a sensible language, where Olga Jevrić had created an original, purely artistic form rafined into an abstract and universal shape.
Olga Jevrić was born on 29 September 1922 in Belgrade, from her father Srbislav Jevrić, director of The Bank-trade Association and mother Ana born Radivojević-Vačić.
She had attended the primary school and lower classes of gymnasium at Pansionat "St. Joseph" in Belgrade, and higher classes at 2nd Woman State gymnasium in Belgrade. Parallelly with the gymnasuim, she attended the Music School "Stanković" with professor Zinaida Grickat. She successfully enrolled to Music Academy in 1942. She also enrolled already the next year at the Sculpture department of The Academy of Fine Arts.In 1946 she got her Diploma at The Music Academy in the class of professor Ćirilo Ličar, and two years later at the Sculpture department of The Academy of Fine Arts in the class of professor Sreten Stojanović. She took part in VII exhibition of ULUS that same year.Since then, her productive and rich creative work and development has started.
Olga Jevrić appeared in the period which is extremely turbulent and aimed towards new values, shortly after The World War Two, when the constitution of the new state was in process.At that time, new social values based on socialism were made. The politic was a carrier of the frame in which the art was to place its potentials.However, with the strength of her creative power, Olga Jevrić had started with a courageous path of her own artistic necessity. She distracted from the main stream of the postwar socialist realism fulfilling her own destiny.
Her initial period of artistic development is consisted from a serial of figurative works, acts and portraits. She is still under the influence of the Academy she was just about to complete and socialist realism as well. But, in spite the main stream, she constitutes her own expression at the very beginning of her art journey.The artistic work of Olga Jevrić is very productive and lasting for almost six decades. The prelude period which lasted from the eary fifties is filled with works in which the value of the form is to be defined and where the alienation from the realistic interpretation and a figurative concept is present. Series of sculptures, figures, reliefs and portraits arose ( portraits of Katarina Ambrozić, Angelina Gatalica and Slobodan Petrović). A relief "Tombstone, a Proposal for the Monument" predicted for Prokuplje and the sculpture "The Rower" are considered as the beginning of even more courageous expressivity.
During the 6th decade, Olga Jevrić changes drastically her relation towards space and sculpture, and in a completely new way. The other works followed: A Proposal for the Monument - Milanovac 1954, as Proposal for the Monument in Pljevlje where she won the First Price. The year 1957. is also important because of her first individual exhibitions "Spacial Compositions".
The space became a part of the plastic construction. She took part at the exhibition at XXIX Biennal in Venice next year, where she was noticed from the part of art critics. End of the sixth decade brought to Olga Jevrić a complete affirmation and verification of her value and the significance of her sculpture within the process of the Jugoslavian and world art as well.
She made a breakthrough in the field of abstraction where the methaphoric replaced the descriptive and the anegdotical. Significant sculptures: Complementary Forms, 1956; Vertical Composition, 1956; A Proposal for the Monument II, 1956. The year 1963. brought the public condemnation of the new art from the side of state's leadership with Josip Broz Tito at the front. Though, that condemnation did not stop artists in developing the process that could not be stop. They remained consistent to their ideas. It is the same with Olga Jevrić.In works from 1965. a tendency for prominence of values of space played a certain role. Then, the sculptures became larger in their dimensions ( Tectoidal Octopod, Centripental Form, Trinome).
The seventh decade in the work of Olga Jevrić passed in a manner of continual development, elaborated but never till the end. Radical changes never took part in her work although her own relation towards the mass and form has changed. Expressive effect was still present but it came to pacification. (Articulation of the Space III - 1970., Concentric Correspondence 1970., Red Massives 1973.).
Extremely expressive character of her sculpture, specific moment of spacial problematic, relation towards the matter, mass, lamination of the meaning and polimethaphoricity are the characteristics that obtained the functionality of Olga Jevrić sculpture in art of early 80es.
At the exhibition in SKC (The Gallery of Student's Cultural Centre) in 1988. she presented her new works with a completely changed relation towards the form and mass. Instead of early apparently amorph masses, there appeared the shapes in which a right contour is clearly defined, the appearance of the block ( Accumbent Forms 1986-88. Triple Crossing 1986-88.).It came both to structure and disstructure for the sake of manifestation of expression.The bar has not the same function as earlier. It does not connect separated parts, it is not a transfer anymore and the bond between individual masses. Now it is encorporated deep in the tissue of the sculpture.In the year 1989., she was rewarded at the V Pančevo Exhibition because she was one of the anticipators and precursors of the processes that occurred in our sculpture and arts during the eighties.
Her sculpture had developed continuously, became more compact, sublime and possessed a certain geometric and constructive reference pertinent to the overall atmosphere and the art at the end of decade. It came to the joint of expression of subjectivity and the dose of rationalism.Instead of dismembered expressive sculptures the artist was occupied with the compact forms in the whole.Even more, her sculpture is no longer a strong compact mass, a defined shape. More often it is consisted of parts - segments which enabled the metamorphosis of shapes.
During the nighties, she changed the look of her sculptures and pointed that out at the exhibition "Three Sculptures" presented at The National Library in Belgrade . (For Isotopic Space 1996., Enumeration 1998., Limiting Value 1999.).These sculptures presented a compilation of the most characteristic problematic reasons which occupied Olga Jevrić during the nighties and the return to the idea of the block-form.Her creation in the field of photography, which is not widely known, should be mentioned as well. She made an exhibition of photographs at the Gallery Gallery "Zlatno oko" in Novi Sad in 1993.The photographs have artistic potential and structurality. Their thematic is life which is around us, at the market, site, street. She made cadres of fragments of reality which are honest and great in their simplicity.
Nowadays, Olga Jevrić lives and works in her birthtown Belgrade.