Art: Barilli of Belgrade

Thirty-two paintings by Yugoslavia’s foremost woman artist were exhibited in Manhattan last week by the United Yugoslav Relief Fund. The artist: Milena Pavlovitch Barilli, who signs her pictures “Milena,” is a cousin of Yugoslavia’s young King Peter II.

Milena’s pictures revealed a smooth, sculptural quality, a command of detail, a passion for realism possessed by few modern painters. They recall the 15th-Century Italians. In St. John, the artist’s favorite, the almost incredible detail of the long golden locks of hair might have been done by the hand of Fra Filippo Lippi, the veins on the hands and arms by the Surrealist virtuoso Salvador Dali. In Silence the delicacy of the veil over the sleeping girl’s face, the pearl-like drops of water, suggested the Dutch masters. Milena’s superb taste falters only rarely, notably in her portrait of her Royal cousin, which might have graced the shop windows of a military tailor.

Tall, aristocratic Milena Pavlovitch Barilli was born in 1911 near Belgrade, began to paint when she was eleven. Her work hangs in the galleries of The Hague, Florence, Paris, Rome’s Mussolini Museum. She claims that there is much of the early Slavic art in her painting, but that the average American does not recognize it. Few, however, could fail to recognize her as a painter in the grand manner.