The First 76
International Small Format Graphics Exhibition
18 December 2025 – 24 January 2026.
This exhibition traces the decades-long history of the Graphic Collective (GC), affirming its position as an artistic event that celebrates the very nature of graphic art. It embodies the vital idea of preserving the role of a mediator in creating and nurturing dialogue between authors, the gallery, and audiences through the continuity of its programme activities and the strong tradition of which this project is a part. As this exhibition is also an important focal point for presenting the achievements of contemporary artistic production and an opportunity for critical reflection on the field of graphic art. It engages with the identity and conceptual frameworks of this practice.
Despite the brutality of the times in which we live, we believe that the mission of culture is most healing. As in 1994, at the Second International Small Format Graphics Exhibition, this exhibition, marking the 76th anniversary of the GC, is also international. The friendship within the artistic community, which strengthens creativity and has a positive impact on society, has been reaffirmed. Alongside 122 authors from Serbia, 89 international artists responded to our invitation — artists who have held solo exhibitions at the GC, participated in its programmes, or are, following the principle of shared networks, friends of our friends. This selection brings together exceptional artistic achievements by established authors from 34 countries across all continents — from Japan, Australia, Canada, Taiwan, and the United States to European countries. Through a creative dialogue among 209 authorial signatures and 300 works, we sought to examine autonomous artistic practices and journeys through imagined worlds, as well as the convergence of diverse artistic languages and varied poetic foundations. By inviting the artistic communities from other countries and parts of the world, to join our artists in affirming graphic art as both a school of art and life, and a fluid space of the spirit, we have reinforced the belief that the mission of culture is both beneficial and generous.
P.S. The idea of authors gathered around the Graphic Collective is still alive — that an original work of art should enter every home and, as a meaningful gift, animate, delight, educate, and cultivate a new audience. As the exhibition enters its eighth decade, new editions continue. Works by artists from the national selection remain at the same price as last year.
Since 1991, the Small Seal Award has been awarded at the Small Format Graphics Exhibition. This year, the Jury consisting of Biljana Vuković, printmaker; Viktor Mijatović, printmaker; and Miroslav Sapundžić, art historian, unanimously decided to award this prize to Nada Denić, visual artist. Nada Denić’s work confirms the inexhaustible nature of personal creative potential in exploring visual solutions within the field of abstract graphic expression. A sculptor by her primary artistic vocation, in her practice her interests have also been realised through other visual disciplines, while drawing and printmaking are today at the centre of her practice. Her recent bodies of work are closely aligned with the modernist discourse of geometric abstraction, which serves as her conceptual framework. The plasticity of visual form unfolds in inexhaustible variations close to Op Art — through the repetition of linear flows, wave-like movements, and their balanced black-and-white rhythms. The title of the awarded work, Move, evocatively points to the power of artistic and social impulses in freeing us from the static constraints of rigid matrices.
