Art & Culture

Montenegro is an unusual unity of contrasts of different civilization courses present from earliest times. Its border between two worlds – The East and the West resulted in different cultures being present here, in which one can recognize traces from Byzantine, Islam, Venice, Austria-Hungary.

Of course, the most noticeable traces and the biggest number of monuments originate from Slavic culture, in particular the ones from the time of the dynasties Vojisavljevic, Nemanjic, Balsic, Crnojevic, with the last Petrovic Dynasty. Monasteries Ostrog, Moraca, Piva, Savina, are just a part of the church treasury belonging to Orthodox-Byzantine cultures. Political independence of the state and of Orthodox Church will lead to autonomy of cultural styles in art. At that time the monasteries were centers of political, spiritual and every day life. Montenegro expressed its high spiritual ambitions in particular in the XV c. when, at the time of discovery of America, it got its printing house. Church books were printed in it with Renaissance decoration of great artistic value.

On the Montenegrin coast, in the territory which was for a long time under the Republic of Venice, Gothic and Renaissance prevailed till the XVIII c. At that time the Baroque style dominated both in sculpture and painting, whose extraordinary representative was Tripo Kokolja (1661-1713).

Civil Art in Montenegro appeared in a time of national maturity in the XIX c. This led to international integration when many young people went for schooling in European university centers. These were contacts that laid foundation of the modern Montenegrin culture which became part of the world heritage thanks to the name of Petar Lubarda, Dado Djuric and Danilo Kis.

In Montenegro, a country which unselfishly paid the price of liberty and sacrifices – poetry has a magical power. For the Montenegrins, in the past and now – poet, state and religious leader Petar II Petrovic Njegos (1813-1851) was and remains the example of wisdom and love of freedom, morals and patriotism, because, “…A man must act as a man!”