Simonida Rajčević


Simonida Rajčević is a Serbian painter and artist. She has had more than 10 individual and 20 group exhibitions.

Life

Rajčević was born on April 2, 1974 in Belgrade, in what was then Yugoslavia. After finishing her primary and secondary education, she enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1992. She received her bachelor's degree in 1997. She won a DAAD scholarship and attended post-graduate studies in Berlin. She became a member of Association of Visual Artists of Serbia in the same year. In 1999, she received her master's degree. She became an assistant to Professor Cedomir Vasic at the Academy of Fine Arts in 2000., she was completing her doctoral degree and working as docent - junior professor at the same university.

Exhibitions

Rajčević's first solo exhibition was in 1995 at the Student Cultural Centre Gallery in Belgrade. It was an installation named "The last survivors from Nostrom". This giant construction of hanging metal plates was inspired by the creature from the movie Alien. Her next exhibition, "Express Old Masters Non-Stop", was in 1997 at the Zvono Gallery. This is a first series of her large format paintings, also named 'plastic angels'. In 1998, she made a tribute to her year-and-a-half-long post-graduate studies in Germany, named "Berlin Mainstream". On these paintings she represented massive cranes as a symbol of the city of Berlin at that time – under construction, expanding and widening, rebuilding itself.
Her next series of works was made using combined techniques of digital print and acrylic on canvas. It is named "Truth for the truth" and consists of negatives of already ancient posters of rock and roll and pop icons such as Patti Smith, Nick Cave and Elvis Presley, assembled with Romanic and Gothic architecture as the monuments of human persistence and effort, with images of stone carved archangel Michael, the judge and witness with scattered wings, and the statue of Jesus himself, bowing over the images of these modern gods of music and popular culture.
In 2007, Rajčević's created two monumental canvases, each ten meters long, named "The Snakewalls". By its structure and composition, one Snakewall is more linear in its narration, more gradual and analogue. The other one is fragmented, unpredictable, closer to digital language code. However, both are fiercely expressive and dramatic, both full of tension, characteristic for the matter that is about to break and explode.
Rajčević's most recent works, painted during 2008 and 2009, are mostly inspired by themes and concepts from books and plays of the English playwright, Sarah Kane.
Her latest exhibition, Dark Star, took place at on April 5, 2010. American rock and post-punk star Patti Smith, who was staying in Belgrade at that time, also came to Simonida's exhibition.