Надежда Петровић: живот и уметност у служби нације

English title: Nadežda Petrović: Life and Art in the Service of the Nation

The monograph Nadežda Petrović: Life and Art in the Service of the Nation analyzes Nadežda Petrović (1873–1915) as one of the key figures of Serbian modern art, but also as a public actor whose artistic work, national engagement, humanitarian activity, and wartime sacrifice became part of the broader formation of modern Serbian and Yugoslav cultural memory.

The book does not treat Nadežda Petrović only as a painter or as the subject of a conventional biography. It interprets her as an active participant in the networks of cultural, intellectual, humanitarian, and political elites at the turn of the twentieth century. The analysis focuses on the relationship between modernist artistic expression, national mobilization, public engagement, symbolic capital, and political culture.

The study follows her family and intellectual formation in Serbia, her artistic education in Munich, her encounter with European modern art, her participation in Serbian national activism, her public and humanitarian work, her artistic development in Paris, her Yugoslav cultural orientation, and her wartime engagement during the Balkan Wars and the First World War.

Particular attention is devoted to the transition from Serbian nationalism to the Yugoslav idea, the role of cultural elites in political mobilization, and the ways in which Nadežda Petrović, after her death in Valjevo in 1915, was gradually transformed into a symbol of modern art, national sacrifice, women’s public engagement, and collective memory.

By integrating political history, cultural history, art history, social history, and memory studies, the monograph contributes to the understanding of the relationship between art, nation, elites, and symbolic power in modern Serbia and Southeast Europe.

The book is structured around several major thematic units: the theoretical interpretation of nationalism and intellectual elites; Petrović’s childhood and intellectual formation in Serbia; her encounter with European modern art in Munich; her participation in Serbian national activism; her transition toward Yugoslav cultural and political ideas; her public and humanitarian work; her artistic development in Paris; her role during the Balkan Wars and the First World War; and the later formation of her image as a symbol of modern art and national sacrifice.