On the Terrace

The painting On the Terrace belongs to the artist’s intimistic period and was done in Dubrovnik when Ivan Radović was on holiday with his wife Olga. It depicts a genre scene of a home ambience on a veranda, below a large pink awning, in the thick shade on a sultry summer day. The terrace is snug, fixed tightly between the house opposite with closed shutters and a large palm-tree on the right; it appears as if the scene were taking place in the interior. In the middle part of the background the view opens towards a segment of the sea, implying the opening up of the perspective in this composition of essentially closed space. The two female figures, comfortably seated in wicker chairs are only an additional, secondary part of the interior. The figure on the right, in a black dress and with a fan, has the role of compositional, colouristic counterbalance to the left one sitting at the table in pink clothes. The women are relaxed and waiting, thus their imperceptible presence is placed within the context of the social interpretation of women as passive support to the active role of the artist, who is the observer of the scene and the creator of this vision of a summer’s day. The densely arranged layers of pink surfaces, with value of brightness but tonally related, are systematically cooled down by the distant blue of the sea or the rich green ranging from the intensely green shutters to the light green colour of the table. Moving towards the right side of the painting, this firework display of colours is successively and alternately subsiding both on the dark clothing of the woman with the black fan and the grayish-green curtain or on the part of the door which is already in the shade. Belonging to the series of Radović’s seaside themes in colouristic pathos, the canvas On the Terrace, is one of the most significant intimistic paintings in Serbian modern art, with a profound feeling for nature and a heightened sense of the hedonism of the present moment.