With its long tradition, the naive painting of Kovačica is finding some new artistic expressions and elaborated poetry today in the works of the Knjazovic family. As one of the co-founders of the Kovačica naive art, Jan Knjazovic showed the path with his heart and sowed the seed of a tree which, in his paintings, reaches its branches towards the sky, not a horizon. His daughter Ana Knjazovic and his granddaughter Nataša Knjazovic are spreading those branches towards the sky heights today.

In attempt to define, or at least find the point from which Ana and later Nataša started to act in the world of naive art, we have to look at the naive art in general; we have to look at the moment when Jan, together with the other artists, at first created universal and later his original visual language.

Naive art is „naive” by its definition, but also sincere, innocent, simple and natural in its expression. Those mainly self-taught artists didn’t have to look for the inspiration; they lived their art in the fields, landscapes, in nature. On their paintings they combined an archetypal memory of Slovakia, from where they all came long time ago to Banat and found the abundance of motives scattered in the fields, where the peasants worked tirelessly and lively, thus creating completely special iconography enriched with fantastic coloring. Although belonging to the group of naive artists, each painter from Kovačica had its own style, and Jan Knjazovic undoubtedly defined his art with its heart signature – that art was more than optimistic due to his gentle nature, almost unreal for a male artist. The rhythm of figures indicated beating of the heart, and the ultramarine – that warm blue color in the background – complementary kept the rest of the motives in the foreground warm.

Jan Knjazovic left a great legacy to his family, he introduced the love for art to their hearts, but at the same time he left one difficult task, and that was to keep and continue the tradition, not by copying, but upgrading it. That upgrade can be seen and even felt on the paintings of Ana and Nataša through that two and three hearts, which bring to their paintings such powerful emotion, so we can be sure that Jan’s heart is full.

In what way is Ana following or how much is she decomposing her father’s art? When you observe Ana’s fantastically magical paintings, you can feel that she belongs to Kovačica and its naive art thematically – with nature and village, motives of animals, people, trees, small houses of Banat… But thanks to her uninhibited imagination, these themes and motives on her paintings take on a different appearance. The motives become phantasms, the human figures are not Brueghel-style slow and heavy – on the contrary, these people could get everywhere, while almost weightless, hovering or climbing up the corn cob. And the horses are so free that, although without the wings, it appears that they can fly. The cockfight is not physical, but formal and colorful. Ana’s compositions are solid; she shapes and subordinates all the things on the painting according to the central motive. This was the first thing that she learned from his father, and then she put that ultramarine color – Jan’s trademark – on her paintings background, and with its nuances she realizes plans and illusion of perspective.

The participants of Ana’s artistic dream are distributed carefully, like in friezes, sometimes horizontally, sometimes vertically. The coloring of figures on Ana’s paintings is even brighter and stronger than her father’s, in order to deepen the intensity of participants’ relationship in this magic game, against the monochrome background. This background is actually a memory of Jan, it is unsensual world, which we can approach only through emotions, it is the stage on which Ana placed the actors of her large magical drama. That warm blueness of sleeping nights brings Ana’s dream about the world to reality – not the world in the way it really is, but how it should be. Protected, cheerful, wildly free, unspoiled and full of emotion. Perhaps Jan Knjazovic brought the sensitivity and emotion to the naive painting, but it is more than certain that Ana developed it to the point, where emotions overcome any relation with the reality. That’s why Anna’s poetry is out of this world, for her it is just a starting point, while the ending point is deep in the soul of the beholder. This style of painting can hardly remain within the borders of naive art definition as such. Because Ana’s art has so much of a fairytale feel, that it reminds Chagall. From the real life in the village, Ana stepped into the realm of the surreal world of the myth of village. The work of Ana Knjazovic is a specific form of fantastic, or magical, and yet by heart „naive” realism.

The work of Nataša Kňazovic Mijailović takes us to the last stage of developed poetics of the Kňazovic family. If Ana stepped into the magical realm, Nataša has brought his magical world of symbols and allegories to the absolutely appropriate form. She feels the noble tradition of pictorial poetics of her family, but she also makes a brave step towards the new motives and the new, unexpected relationship within the world of famous background. Namely, Nataša combines heritage and family memories with her own sense of inner world and its relationship with the surroundings and society.

The dominant figure of her artistic world is an image of a young, beautiful woman; sometimes naked, sometimes dressed as a ballerina, and other times as a princess. This female character is not realistic enough so we could think that it is a self-portrait of an artist, and it is not either a marionette from some theatrical play, whose strings are pulled by someone else. This central female figure is just Nataša’s inner life – woven from the finest and purest feelings – that pulls the strings and creates artistic expression of this artist. Whether it is shaped like naked Venus, or Juno surrounded by the peacocks, the inner self of Nataša Knjazovic – although in enigmatic relation with the other motives – more than clearly feels and reacts to the outside world.

Thus her art becomes some kind of the diary entries of her soul, but at the same time it is engaged in the society relations. Nataša’s painting is filled with symbols and riddles, it is a product of her inner life and hidden imagination – it is metaphysical.  But unlike Giorgio de Chirico or heroine of Serbian metaphysical painting Milena Pavlović Barili, her world of fantasy and illusions doesn’t stand on deserted squares of antique or Renaissance, but in the landscape of her native Kovačica, in Banat sunflower fields, and always under the bright sky. A fact that she belongs to the new era she confirms by the critical approach to the modern momentum by mocking the artificial presentation of internet appearances, or when she paints harlequins and Chaplin on the stage, she emphasizes the importance of differences between what is true and what is false, the essence and the illusion, difference between inner life that makes us rebels versus the outside world, in which we are forced to live.

Nataša is painting a flower from her waistcoat, decorated with an old Slovakian embroidery, and on the painting a woman is watering that flower, and through that kind of work the legacy of the Knjazovic family grows and flourishes to a portrait of her grandfather Jan, with whom the artist connects not only through the bloodline, but also through the everlasting sunflowers and ultramarine color – a family protecting color. Nataša is shaping the mild forms of all her characters, the female bodies and oval faces are particularly softly modeled. The coloring is completely in thematic function, so the pastel colors are coloring seemingly familiar landscapes into some kind of surreal, imaginary landscapes covered in haze.

The last two generations of Knjazovic family, two big artists, two women are proving that in the heritage of naive art there is no room for separating male and female themes. Although it was very difficult for women in the history of art to obtain the equality of rights, these two female painters are showing us that the equality in this case is completely unnecessary, because the advantage of a female painting actually gets a full meaning in the work of Ana and Nataša Knjazovic. With highly expressed sensibility for the world around us and at the same time open senses for the inner world these two artists are providing the new mark and a special developing way to the naive art of Kovačica.

Jelena Anđelković, art historian