Serbian performance and body artist, 21st century. at the beginning caused great interest in the rendering of historical performances.
Her father was Montenegrin, her mother Serbian, and both were partisans of the resistance to Hitler's Germany during the Second World War. Father Vojo Abramović reached the rank of general in Tito's army in the fight against Croatian fascists and fascist collaborators. Both parents rejected the family's Eastern Orthodox faith (Marina's great-grandfather was a patriarch of the Serbian Church). After the war, Vojo's father remained to serve in the Yugoslav Army, Air Force. Mother Danica, a medical student, turned to studying art history and eventually became the director of the Museum of Art and Revolution in Belgrade. Marina Abramović was deeply influenced by the experience of the war years passed on by her parents. According to her, she felt from a young age that she would become an artist: "it was a necessity ... the only way I could exist in this world."

At that time, Yugoslavia belonged to the communist bloc, but there were no USSR military units stationed there, and its citizens could travel and work in Western Europe. Personal and freedom of expression were less restricted. This is not to say that artists were not censored, and Marina Abramovic's performances were probably easier to tolerate because of her parents' positions and the fact that she was a woman. Marina Abramovic started attending the Venice Biennale at the age of 12. Marina received her first art lesson from her father's friend, a representative of art informel, who had studied in Paris. He laid a canvas on the floor, covered it with paint, glue and added sand. After that, he doused everything with gasoline and set it on fire, declaring: "this is the sunset" and left. This act showed Marina that the process of creating art can be as important or even more important than the final product, an idea popularized by the French artist Yves Klein.

As a child, Marina had unusual ideas: she decorated her bedroom with shoe polish so that her mother no longer wanted to enter it, and she suggested that her father create pictures in the sky while airplanes scattered the clouds. in 1965 Marina Abramovic entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade to study painting, but eventually became interested in the performance genre, using her own body to express certain thoughts and ideas. in 1972 she completed post-graduate studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and began appearing in public with her own performances. in 1973 in the performance "Ritmas 10" she stabbed the spaces between her fingers with a knife, sometimes injuring herself. in 1974 in the performance "Rhythm 0", she stood statically in a room with 72 different objects, including a rose, a scalpel and a loaded gun. Visitors were offered to use these facilities with Marina as they wished. The performance drew mixed reviews.


in 1975 Marina Abramovic moved to Amsterdam, where she began to collaborate with the German artist Frank Uwe Laysiepen (Ulay). The themes of many of their performances were related to the issue of the concept of sexuality. For example, in 1977 in the performance, the artists stood naked facing each other in the narrow entrance of the museum and the visitor had to turn sideways in order to pass, i.e. i.e. to choose which one, male or female, to pass facing and perhaps touch. The artists broke up in 1988. symbolically walking the Great Wall of China from different sides to say "goodbye" to each other when they meet. in 1997 Marina Abramović was awarded the "Golden Lion" for the best artist at the Venice Biennale. This significantly raised the international authority and fame of the artist. Her installation "Balkan Baroque" used video material together with a performance that explores the question of her cultural and family identity.

in 2002 Marina Abramović attracted the attention of the public with the installation "House with a view of the ocean", during which the gallery installed three open cubes attached to the walls, in which the artist lived ascetically for twelve days. Marina Abramović was concerned about the temporality of the performances, the fact that they only occasionally remain captured on film media. With the aim of changing this, in 2005 she organized seven re-performances at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, in which he replicated the performances of other famous artists, including Bruce Nauman and Joseph Beuys. in 2010 for her retrospective at New York's Museum of Modern Art, she hired other artists to replicate her past performances and presented her new performance, "Participating Artist". Marina Abramović lives permanently in New York. in 2009 an institute named after her opened in San Francisco, which examines and popularizes Marina's work.