It is sufficient to say that Milena painted her dream, which is so violent. Is it reachable? Can it be comprehended with the logic of this world? Milena painted her dream-like world on canvass. She materialised the pieces. Is it worth searching for the inside connection and assembling the whole that might not exist at all? Should movement of the hand that touched the unreal be classified into some existing direction? Is it possible to name the expression of such particularity in order to understand her art? A dream can be very violent, and at the same time so human.

Milena Pavlovic- Barilli was born on November 5, 1909 in Pozarevac.
She finished primary school in Pozarevac, and high school partly in Rome, and in 1922, she enrolled in the Royal School of Arts in Belgrade from which she graduated in 1926. Soon after, she left for Munich with her mother in order to study fine arts at the Academy there. Two years later, she returned to her native country, having an exhibition in the Art Pavilion in Belgrade. She organised her first solo exhibition in the Journalists’ Home. Within several years, her paintings were being exhibited all around Europe. She travelled to Spain, Italy, and England, returning to her native country from time to time, but she could not find a post even as a drawing teacher in Tetovo, a small town in Macedonia. In the beginning of the 1930s, she settled in Paris, where she lived with some interruptions until 1939, when she left for New York.

(Selected parts of BelGuest Magazine Article)

TO DREAM
IS SO HUMAN