Хероизација сликарке Надежде Петровић (1915–1941)

Englisg title: The Heroization of the Painter Nadežda Petrović (1915–1941)

The article The Heroization of the Painter Nadežda Petrović (1915–1941) analyzes the formation of the posthumous cult of Nadežda Petrović, focusing on the selection and interpretation of memory, public representations, and institutional valorization during the interwar period.

Heroization is interpreted as one of the key mechanisms of collective memory, through which an individual is assigned a place in the symbolic order of a community and becomes a bearer of its ideological, moral, and identity-based representations.

Particular attention is devoted to public representations in which Nadežda Petrović was presented as an “apostle” of Yugoslavism, an early figure of modernist transformation, and a symbol of women’s emancipation, as well as to the ritualization and partial militarization of her cult during the transfer of her mortal remains to Belgrade in 1935.

The article shows that her artistic work was not initially at the center of public remembrance. It long remained overshadowed by narratives of patriotic sacrifice, voluntary nursing, and national heroism, and was only gradually integrated into the national modernist canon shortly before the Second World War.

The case of Nadežda Petrović reveals how the heroization of a person, cultural policy, commemorative rituals, and the canonization of art intersect in the formation of modern national cultures.