Zdenka Živković

1921 - 2022

This is one of the very few artworks from Continental Europe listed on this website. Zdenka Živković and her husband Branislav (d.1994) were celebrated restorers and copyists of medieval wall paintings in churches and monasteries across Serbia. Born in South Bohemia, Zdenka's father was a mural painter who carried out the decoration of the National Assembly Building in Belgrade. Zdenka trained at the Academy of Fine Arts and began interpreting and copying the rich array of medieval Serbian frescoes and wall paintings in 1949, aiming to establish a Museum of Frescoes, which was eventually realised. She and Branislav used pigments and binding that were available in the Middle Ages, rather than modern tempera, refining this approach while studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in 1968. Zdenka exhibited her paintings in solo exhibitions and, jointly with Branislav, all around the world from 1954 to 2000, many of them at major museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It is hard to overstate the importance of Zdenka and Branislav's contribution to a sense of Serbian history and identity, and their work has remained highly prized and popular.