North Macedonia Pavilion at the Venice Biennale

The necessity of starting a national cultural institution was generated in the first postwar years from the efforts to complement all the things that the Macedonian nation, due to the historical circumstances, was not able to accomplish in the past.

The initiative to open the Art Gallery, the present National Gallery of Macedonia, was forwarded by the founders of the Macedonian contemporary fine art: Lazar Ličenoski, Nikola Martinoski, Dimče Koco, Dimo Todorovski and the other members of DLUM (Association of Artists of Macedonia). In 1948, by the decision of the Ministry of Education and the Government of the People’s Republic of Macedonia, the establishment of an Art Gallery began as part of the national program that included the organization of the entire social, educational and cultural life in the newly founded state.

The first task of the newly founded national art institution was to evidence, collect and display the national cultural heritage and to follow, purchase and exhibit the current artistic achievements. The program task included acquisition of artworks from the Fine Arts Department of the National Museum in Belgrade which had inherited its continuity from the prewar Yugoslavia. Later on, the Gallery set to collecting the masterpieces of the Medieval Art: icons, fresco copies, wood carvings and monastery models.

Following the museum evidencing and archiving of that fund, the gallery started purchasing artworks of the Macedonian contemporary art and managed to compile the most precious and valuable national collection of the first generation of artists - founders of the contemporary fine art.