Four masters of photography, with two decades of accompanying Herceg Novi festivals, especially the Guitar Art Summer Fest (GASF), have prepared an exhibition showing their visual testimony of guitarists, artists, concerts, emotions, and moments that marked Herceg Novi's Mediterranean nights filled with music. Their photographs record not only the atmosphere of the concerts, but also the spirit of the town, which has grown together with GASF over the years, turning every frame into a story about the meeting of art and life. The exhibition will be an opportunity to relive the most beautiful moments of the festival through the lenses of the four authors and feel the atmosphere that has made the guitar one of the most recognizable symbols of Herceg Novi.
Vanja Berberović Šuberić, recalling the festival story from four years ago when she also "talked" about the guitar and Herceg Novi through photographs, now continues that narrative. She does so with poetic, playful, and somewhat surreal photographs. In them, the guitars are personified, they have feelings, they can fall in love, and the guitar picks, though small, are important companions on their journey. The pedestrian crossing introduces the motif of movement, meeting, and crossing from one time to another—one in which music, cheerfulness, romance, and spontaneity reside or rule the city.
Jason Gold
Black and white photographs "preserve" the essence of music in its most intimate form. They seem to radiate the guitarist's concentration, the silence between the notes, complete devotion to music. There, we find playful light and shadow, emotion and movement, and the guitar, as an extension of emotion, dedication, and thought. Photography, in colour, is quite different - it speaks of freedom and open space. The warm tone of the guitar's wood against the blue of the sea and sky offers a sense of peace. The instrument rests...the music passes from the guitarist's hand into nature, from the scene into the endless horizon.
Miloš Samardžić has truly "given sound" to his photographs. On the stone wall overlooking the city roofs, the endless sky and sea, everything is somehow in an embrace. Just like the guitar is in the guitarist's embrace. And everything creates a feeling of harmony and freedom. However open the space we are looking at is, the guitar expands it even further, because with these photographs it is easy to "hear" the music. In the second photograph, lanterns are released into the sky by the audience, the GASF organisers, and guests in celebration. In it, the guitar and the city, the artist and the audience, are together, and everything speaks of the rich cultural heritage, natural beauty, and authentic atmosphere of Herceg Novi.
Vuk Ilić brings a highly poetic and peaceful atmosphere of Herceg Novi's stone passages, stairs, and squares to his photographs, where light and shadows play tirelessly, creating a sense of mystery. But into this peaceful image, the guitar introduces contrast, liveliness, and warmth, suggesting – although we do not see him – the powerful presence of a human and music. It suggests that magical moment when we desire music or suddenly hear it at a time when time and space are in perfect harmony... The guitar remains the focal point, dominant in the texture of stone, trees, flowers, and the sea...
Two anniversaries
The Thirtieth Anniversary of "Sue Ryder" Gallery and the Twentieth Edition of Guitar Visual Art
All exhibitions within the GASF have been realised in flawless cooperation with the gallerist Ljiljana Marinović, who has been running the "Sue Ryder" gallery for full three decades, since its founding in 1996. The cooperation has grown into a friendship, and the small gallery has remained full of hospitality, good energy, and encounters with artists and friends of art throughout all these years. The gallery is located on the most beautiful square in Herceg Novi, in the Old Town, in Herceg Stefan Square, or Belavista as the locals informally call it. The gallery organises solo exhibitions, and when there are none, they display setups that represent a fine cross-section of contemporary visual arts in the region. Over the years, the gallery has profiled itself as a space for young as well as established artists. Among the authors who have exhibited in the "Sue Ryder" gallery are: Luka Berberović, Milovan Miki Radulović, Milena Jeftić Ničeva Kostić, Filip Janković, Jakov Đuričić, Šemsa Gavrankapetanović Rajnvajn, Zoran Bulatović, Nora Apolonio, Tomislav Toma Stanić...
In addition to the Guitar Visual Art exhibitions, the "Sue Ryder" Gallery is a space where European and world comic artists meet the audience during the Herceg Novi Comic Festival (HSF). It is also an important and reliable participant and one of the organisers of the Small Salon of Herceg Novi Galleries.
Authors' biographies
VANJA BERBEROVIĆ ŠUBERIĆ
Vanja Berberović Šuberić graduated from the Faculty of Applied Arts and Design in Belgrade, majoring in Applied Graphics – Photography Studio. She has exhibited in numerous solo and collective exhibitions both at home and abroad.
After completing her studies, she worked for several years as a wedding photographer for a company based in Miami, Florida. Upon returning to her native Herceg Novi, she established successful cooperation with almost all cultural institutions, documenting the most significant cultural events and festival programmes.
In addition to her artistic and professional work, she is dedicated to the education of young people. She ran the "Little School of Photography", a programme implemented within the Local Action Plan for Youth, organised by the Secretariat for Culture and Education of the Municipality of Herceg Novi.
JASON GOLD
Jason Gold was born in Great Britain, and fell in love with Herceg Novi and Montenegro at first sight. Today he considers them his second home. He has been involved in photography for over fifty years. During his rich career, he has documented the anti-apartheid movement, campaigns for nuclear disarmament, workers' strikes, the lives of homeless people, industrial changes and war events, and has also successfully engaged in fashion photography.
His photographs have been published by reputable world media: The Times, The Independent and The Guardian. As a photojournalist for The Independent, he stayed in Quebec, Canada, in 1995.
He has exhibited in London, Herceg Novi, Podgorica, Kotor, Sombor and other cities of the region. For years, he has been capturing the most significant programmes of Herceg Novi festivals, bringing an authentic and recognizable view of the city's cultural life.
MILOŠ SAMARDŽIĆ
Miloš Samardžić has been professionally involved in photography since 2013, whilst nurturing his love for photography and visual creation for much longer. His photographic expression was shaped by an adventurous spirit, an investigative nature and a strong connection with his environment.
His first works were dedicated to landscapes, mountains, forests, the sea and his native Herceg Novi. He organised his first solo exhibition in 2016, after which he organised two more solo exhibitions and participated in several collective exhibitions.
He is the winner of prizes in photography competitions and has participated in numerous professional lectures in the field of photography. He collaborates with renowned clients in Montenegro and abroad, through various fields of photography, striving to capture the authentic atmosphere and moments of lasting value in every shot.
VUK ILIĆ
Vuk Ilić has been active in photography for more than twenty years, while he began his professional career after 2015. He has been working in electronic media for two decades, developing a recognizable authorial approach to photography.
His native Herceg Novi is his permanent inspiration, and he presents it from unusual angles. He has collaborated with numerous renowned clients from Montenegro and the region, and is the official photographer of the "Jadran" Swimming and Water Polo Club.
His photographs have been published in photo monographs, brochures, on billboards and promotional websites. He has specialised in sports photography. He has participated in the realisation of numerous significant events and projects, including the Mimosa Festival and the Mini-Football Champions League.
Retrospective
The Guitar Art Summer Fest in Herceg Novi has for years been bringing together top performers and an audience for whom the guitar is not just an instrument, but a significant part of the endless story about this town.
In parallel with the open-air concerts, the Festival's exhibition programme called Guitar Visual Art has also been developing, as a fine reflection of guitar music in the space of fine art. On the occasion of the jubilee, the exhibitions alternate between posters that remember past Festivals, photographs that capture every blink of the performance on stage, but also among the audience, as well as works created in different art techniques, from oils and acrylics to drawings and installations.
The unique strength of this festival segment is that between the Belgrade Guitar Art Festival and the Herceg Novi Guitar Art Summer Fest, this programme forms a wondrous bridge of creations. The audience finds them in Belgrade in various galleries, and in Herceg Novi always at the "Sue Ryder" Gallery on the most beautiful square of the Old Town, Belavista, just a few dozen steps away from the Music Square and the Kanli Kula fortress, spaces which in August come alive with the sounds of the guitar and the almost tangible joy of the participants, guests, and audience.
and EDITION
Start
The first Guitar Visual Art exhibition was organised in 2007, and the Festival began a year earlier. Drawings and collages were exhibited by Svetlana Pavlović, who has dozens of solo and many group exhibitions to her name. Among the more interesting is her exhibition dedicated to guitarists, inspired, sincere, with light lines and a strong, deep connection between the musician and the instrument.
2nd edition
el gvojos
The following year, in 2008, Guitar Visual Art showcased photographs signed by el gvojosa (Želimir Gvojić), one of the leading names on the Serbian documentary and concert scene, an artist who goes beyond documentary photography by giving each frame a distinctive mark and emotion. These photographs were created in a split second between what everyone sees and Gvojos’s vision, without which we would never have “caught” that “something” that happens and then disappears forever in a second, unless Gvojos is there with his camera.
3rd edition
The Guitar and I - Montenegrin String
The Guitar and I – The Montenegrin String was the title of the third exhibition organised in 2009. The works of our most prominent caricaturists, Darko Drljević and Luka Lagator, who are rightfully called the bridges of Montenegrin culture to the world, were presented. Drljević and Lagator have won around 500 international awards and have organised several hundred solo and collective exhibitions.
4th edition
Anniversary and retrospective
On the occasion of the anniversary of the Guitar Art Festival in Belgrade, the tenth edition, in 2010 the Guitar Visual Art exhibition was organised as a retrospective of the visual identity of previous festivals and was entitled Half Guitar – Half Hominid. The festival poster artists Pavle Farčić and Vladimir Miladinović exhibited. The message was that in the Hominid creative studio everything is seen as evolution, which is sometimes a symbiosis of the same, the similar, or the different. In such a symbiosis, the small guitar festival became an international festival of guitar art, and the small Hominid studio became creative. Most people would say today that this is a success, but in the Hominid creative studio everything is seen as evolution, so they say: “those were the first ten years”.
5th edition
Objectified sound
Objectified Sound was the title of a group exhibition organised in 2011. Strongly inspired by music, the following artists presented their works: Vlastimir Nikolić, Dušan Đokić, Nikola Žigon, Siniša Žikić, Nevenka Stojsavljević. el gvojos, Pavle Farčić, Vladimir Miladinović, Gordan Pomorišac, Vlada Milinković, Zoran Pavlović, Stojanka Bošnjak, Mimica Aleksić, Branislav S. Marković.
6th edition
Synesthesia
In the “Sue Ryder” Gallery, in 2012, a photography exhibition signed by el gvojosa was organised once again. The exhibition was titled Synaesthesia. The author captured the highlights of concerts, the performers’ enthusiasm and the audience’s emotion. It is important to note that el gvojos is the official photographer of the Guitar Art Festival, and the exhibition included over 30 photographs.
7th edition
Robert Whitaker
In 2013, Robert Whitaker, the British photographer and official photographer of The Beatles from 1964 to 1966, exhibited at Guitar Visual Art. He is an author who captured some of the band's most intimate and artistically significant photographs during the peak of their career, and it should not be forgotten that we regard this group as one of the greatest cultural phenomena of the 20th century. The The Beatles On project reminded us of the importance of the Liverpool quartet, which created new musical forms that are still used today.
8th edition
A posteriori
The incomparable el gvojos presented himself in 2014 with the exhibition A posteriori, offering the public an overview of the creative work of the Guitar Art Festival. It was a photographic tribute to all the Festival’s most important concerts.
Jubilee Tenth Edition of GASF
Jubilee: The Guitar’s Path
At the tenth Guitar Art Summer Fest in 2015, we followed The Path of the Guitar, where Herceg Novi was presented as the “city of art”, while connections were made through the “strings of the guitar”. The layered story was told by Herceg Novi artists: Vanja Berberović Šuberić, Vanja Vikalo and Nikola Ćurčin. It was an interesting, thought-provoking open-air exhibition along the paths of Herceg Novi’s Old Town.
Alongside this, the photography exhibition New Perspective by Anđela Petrovski, her first solo showing, supported the Festival’s young talents. Anđela’s works combined documentary and artistic photography, and each conveyed the emotion, strength and expressiveness of the performers.
the beginning of the second decade
New Voyage
The festival sailed into its second decade, on a new voyage, so sailing was also the theme of the photography exhibition of Milan Živković at Guitar Visual Art in 2016. Alongside the exhibition announcement it was written: “The difference between the end of a voyage and a new voyage depends most on the angle of observation. Every ending carries the possibility of a new beginning, and it depends on the observer whether they will end the story or see the new beginning.” Milan Živković used the photographs to begin a new voyage of old ships, and GASF brought new programmes.
Carlos Salcedo Centurion
Agustín Barrios Mangoré: Life and Work
From 15 to 20 August 2017, the “Sue Ryder” gallery hosted a photography exhibition dedicated to the life and work of the great Agustín Barrios, the best-known Paraguayan guitarist and composer of classical music. The author of the exhibition The Life and Work of Agustín Barrios – Mangoré is Karlos Salsedo Senturion, who spent nearly two decades travelling across the American and European continents along the “Mangoré Route”, searching for traces that would help him tell his timeless story, photographing and filming not only the content, but also the context of countless interviews and scattered archival materials found on this journey. For the first time, the audience in Montenegro had the opportunity, through the exhibition and the film, to get to know the composer whom critics regard as the “South American Chopin of the guitar”.
Isabela Matoš
Time of trees
A unique exhibition Time of Trees – an installation realised according to the idea of the visual artist from Herceg Novi, Izabela Matoš, was organised in 2018 as a result of her dialogue with the Italian guitarist Pietro Baldoni. “Music is unavoidable,” Izabela explained, recalling birth, development and growth, and with it the tree comes to life too. The rhythm of the music and the rhythm of the textile threads, as she passes them through lace, are inseparable and create a chain reaction of emotions, melancholy and intertwining souls.
15. GASF
Visual identity
A year later, in 2019, at the 15th Guitar Art Summer Fest, the exhibition Visual Identity offered the public a chronology of the Festival’s visual identity, conceived by the renowned creative studio Hominid led by Pavle Farčić. The display featured 14 posters and confirmed that the Festival’s design and slogan are a form of engaged art that conveys messages and raises questions. “As important as the music programme is to us, we pay just as much attention to branding and the Festival’s contemporary development. A provocative slogan, a creative visual identity and an engaged campaign are aspects we build anew for each edition,” said the organisers.
pandemic
The Other Side of the Mirror
The coronavirus pandemic delayed GASF and the exhibition planned as part of Guitar Visual Art. The following year, the story continued with an exhibition of paintings done in acrylic on canvas. The story of New Belgrade and guitar music was painted by journalist and publicist Vitka Vujnović, who has been with the Festival since its inception. Her The Other Side of the Mirror presented the reflection that cities, people and music leave in her eyes and soul, expressed by combining something between realism, surrealism and Fauvism.
VANJA BERBEROVIĆ, BORIS ŠUBERIĆ, VITKA VUJNOVIĆ
Three artists from Herceg Novi
Guitar Visual Art brought together three artists from Herceg Novi in 2022: Vanja Berberović and Boris Šuberić were joined by Vitka Vujnović, and each, in their own format and medium, brought the image of the city of art, Herceg Novi, where Guitar Art Summer Fest took its place as one of the most beloved festivals. Boris Šuberić works in illustration, design, souvenir creation and painting: “I tell a Mediterranean story... I do not have perfect hearing, nor can I play, so I paint my music. Guitar Art in Herceg Novi is a true inspiration for me.” Vanja Berberović Šuberić exhibited photographs with the message: “The sounds of crickets and Guitar Art are simply an integral part of the mature summer of Herceg Novi!” The owner of the “Sue Ryder” gallery, Ljiljana Marinović, made an additional contribution to the programme with verses in which she bestows upon the guitarists “a stone pižuo and a wall built with eternity”
"It is sought, it is played"
Vojislav Vojo Kilibarda
Vojislav Vojo Kilibarda, Master of Painting, museum adviser, editor of visual arts programmes and designer at JUK Herceg Fest, or, in a word, an artist in the fullest sense, a Mediterranean man of restless creative spirit, a curious experimenter who “searches, plays, and moves from the life-oriented to the artistic and from the artistic to the philosophical” exhibited at Guitar Visual Art in 2023. Before that, he had staged around ten solo exhibitions and taken part in several group exhibitions. With his installation at Guitar Visual Art, he showed the audience all segments of his diverse, powerful and rich creativity, following Lubarda’s fully adopted thought, “I am I, and I create the world as I wish…”
NIKOLA ĆURČIN
Living the art and music of the guitar
To live art and the music of the guitar was the title of Nikola Ćurčin’s exhibition, whose interests are comics, illustration, painting, animation and, on top of all that, music. He has so far had around fifteen solo exhibitions and taken part in more group and charity exhibitions. He has illustrated books and designed theatre posters. Art historians say of Ćurčin that he is a “mature draughtsman and graphic master”, and that “his line is clear and follows the form”. Ćurčin is the founder of the Herceg Novi Comic Festival, which has meanwhile gained regional renown. For all these reasons, he has long been ranked among the best authors not only in Montenegro, but also in the region, and he explains: “Searching is the essence of painting. Art. Science. Life…”
EL GVOJOS I DUŠKO VUKIĆ
Holy Scriptures
At Guitar Visual Art 2025, Svetlopisi by el gvojosa and Duško Vukić, legends of concert photography, arrived. Their works have never been merely recordings of performers on stage. They know how to capture the seconds when performer and instrument become one, emotions that are hard to foresee and notice with the naked eye, the light of the spotlights that weaves through the musician’s fingers, or spills across the performer’s face… Just as they feel music, visitors to the exhibition felt their photographs from concerts, from the life of Belgrade where they live, and of Herceg Novi, which they gladly visit and love.
