The Gallery 'Milan Konjović (Tuner's House or Gale's House)
Description
In the fourth act of the charter signed by Maria Theresa granting Sombor the status of a “free and royal town”, permission was given to town authorities to grant a concession for opening a pharmacy. The first Sombor pharmacy 'Kod zlatnog lava', that was opened in 1766 by Ferdinand Plank, a pharmacist from Osijek, was located in the same building, on whose foundation the pharmacist from Sombor, Franc Tuner built his own house in 1838. Norberto Bonđeli, the surgeon from Sombor, took over the pharmacy when Plank suddenly died in 1772. After him, in the same place, Ignjac Bileg opened a pharmacy in 1777, and his widow sold it in 1792, to Martin Tuner, the father of Franc Tuner. The new Tuner’s building, a freestanding two-storey building with façade in Biedermeier style with rectangular base and prominent horizontal division, had in its front part a protuberance with a stone framed gate, two windows on the ground floor and three windows with rectangular frames on the first floor. A pharmacist, Emil Gale rented the pharmacy from Tuner family in 1864 and finally bought the building in 1881. The pharmacy changed several owners until it was confiscated in 1944. Purposefully and thoroughly redecorated Tuner’s or Gale’s house today hosts the gallery of paintings by Milan Konjović (1898-1993), opened on 10 September 1966 as the legacy to his native town. After the renovation there are eight exhibit rooms covering the area of 170m2 in the former Tuner’s house. The gallery exhibits the collection of 1,083 works of the renowned Sombor’s painter (oils, tempera, aquarelles, pastels and drawings), that were painted between 1913 and 1990. There is also a rich hemeroteque of 43 albums from 1914 to the present.



