Mihael Milunović's 'Le Pont' at Foire Bienvenue in Paris

At the Bienvenue art fair in Paris, the Laufer Art Gallery from Belgrade presented Mihael Milunović's 2015 painting 'Le Pont'. The work depicts a nearly nude woman in a gymnastic 'bridge' pose spanning a dark river, with night-blue pylons and power lines against a black sky. The scene evokes Pančevo, an industrial suburb of Belgrade on the Danube left bank, whose refineries were bombed by NATO in 1999, causing an ecological disaster. The bridge in the painting is the only one along the entire Serbian Danube that survived the airstrikes. Milunović was at the École des Beaux-Arts de Paris in Vladimir Veličković's studio during the final days of the Yugoslav wars. The painting's deep colors and academic treatment of the female body suggest that beauty and bodily skill can repair destruction and reconnect what was severed.