Self-Portrait

Recognised first as a top-class landscape painter, she also created a series of exceptionally valuable portraits. However, in Nadežda's oeuvre, the only painted self-portrait survived, completed in the time of her second, the so-called Serbian period. It was created in 1907, almost by accident, spontaneously and unpretentiously, as a sign of a friendly relationship with the painter Ivan Grohar, who made the painter's portrait in pastel the same year. The eyes are expressive; the look is direct and reveals a strong and determined character. The painting is done with flowing, energetic strokes in the spirit of expressionism with very discreet secession elements. The self-portrait, from the time of Nadežda's extensive engagement for the Yugoslav idea on the social and cultural levels, never exhibited during her life, became one of the masterpieces within the portrait genre of the early Serbian modernism epoche.