РЕЗИМЕ

Aleksandar Kadijević

The one century of a national style searching in Serbian architecture (the middle of the 19th
century - the middle ofthe 20th century)

A new Serbian architecture characterized different stylistic approapriations, among them, the one
of the most important undoubtly is that style which we can characterized as Serbian national
style. Concived as the typical idiom of the epoch of romantic historicizm in Serbian architecture
in 19th century, the idea ofnational style survived to this days. The protagonists ofthis style since
the middle of the last to the middle of this century had imprinted a deep track in our art, inspired
with wealthy Serbian-Byzantine architectonic tradition they created a new models in architecture.
Almost all of important Serbian architects, during that long historical period had contributed to
the development of a national style with the constructing the buildings across Serbia and
Yugoslavia later.

The constructors of a national style were inspired by different ideological, proffesional and
patriotic motifs, regardless off that which European style they deeply prefered. A lot of buildings
were built in a national style - churches, chapels, chamel-houses, memorial monuments and
profane buildings. Existing works represented the architectonic diversity of Serbian constructors,
in the span of naive imitations to the partial or the total mimicry of medieval buildings, or on the
other side they expressed academic compilations of creative, imaginative works. The different
senses of a nationai style during various periods were considered as the symbol of a national
spirit, in the spite of fact all of them were based on the same artistic patem - Serbian medieval
tradition and the examples of folkloristic legacy.

During the first period of Serbian national style 1850-1918. main protagonists were Damjanov's
group (churches in Smederevo, Sarajevo, Niš, Vranje, Mostar, etc.), Andreja Andrejević (church
in Kragujevac), Hanzen's Serbian pupils - Ivačković, Živanović and Nikolić. Under the strong
influence of MiddIe Europe's secessionist architecture, the Serbian type of a national secessionist
architecture was created at the beggining of this of this century, with few elemens of a national
medieval architectonic tradition (Tanazević, Maslać, Korunović). Between the two world wars,
Serbian style convicted the west parts of Kingdom of Yugoslavia, Main protagonists at that
period were Korunović, Krstić, Denić, Popović, Androsov, Deroko, etc. During the fourth decade
of this century the folkioristic type of Serbian national style rose in the works of Kojić, Deroko,
Samojlov, Anagnosti, etc. After the strong antihistoristic and antinacionalistic ideas of a
predominant modemists in Serbian architecture, Serbian national style had disappeared from
historic scene at the half of the century.