A hidden gem of Slovakia in Serbia
11 December 2024
Imagine yourself in the village of Kovačica, Serbia, in the 1930s. It is winter, and you have just finished a day of taking care of your land and some of your bees. How do you pass the long winter nights? The Slovak minority in the North of Serbia developed an art practice that has been among the latest additions to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list.
Practitioners of the Naïve painting are self-taught or learned their skills from older generations of painters in their community. The Slovak style is recognisable because of its playful use of colours and everyday scenes of rural life. "I look for inspiration in nature, my family, bee-keeping. The name 'naive' describes that the people did not study art or are not under the influence of globalisation," Miroslav Hraško, the youngest member of the artist community in Vojvodina, Serbia, told The European Correspondent.
Europe had multiple other additions to the UNESCO list: the Ukrainian coloured eggs "pysanky", Parisian zinc roof restorers, Bosnia and Herzegovina's urban folk music "sevdalinka", and Estonia's traditional potato and barley dish "multi puder".
 | Tamara Kanuchova Currently, over 50,000 Slovaks are living in Serbia. It has been the biggest community of Slovaks abroad for nearly 300 years, especially in the city of Vojvodina. The main reasons for migration were the search for work and religion. Protestants were persecuted by catholics in the 18th century, the main migration period. Nowadays, Slovaks run their own cultural institutions in Serbia and mainly work in agriculture or crafts. And in their free time, some of them preserve their unique culture via paintings. |
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