Retired images - David Maljković - Gallery Nova Newspapers no.17

galerija nova newspapers no. 17 special issue on the occassion of the exhibition

david maljković retired compositions

jan 17 − feb 21, 2009 metro pictures • new york

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mission impossible v:

After the wave has passed, permanent values come back to light all by themselves, without being illuminated. The true things carry their light within themselves, and our batteries are never empty.

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Michel Seuphor, from the exhibition catalogue “Bakić, Picelj, Srnec”, Denise René Gallery, Paris [ 1959 ]


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As the curatorial collective What, How and for Whom, we have been running Gallery Nova since 2003. During 2007, the Gallery Nova program thematised the historical and socio-political conditions of modernism with a special accent on socialist modernism. The project of Socialist Yugoslavia, with its relatively liberal system, its open borders, free circulation of ideas and cultural contacts, is often described as “different”, compared to the countries of “real socialism”. Exploring the modernist remnants of socialist Yugoslavia and their echoes on the present, as well as their future possibilities, is the common point that has been linking the art work of David Maljković with our curatorial activities. The works by David Maljković continuously confront us with the forgotten or “invisible” heritage, or the heritage that is not perceived as valuable for the present moment. Reaching into the past, the artist turns to examples in which the ideas of universal modernist progress are interconnected with a specific understanding of socialism as a potentially radical, experimental modernist concept par excellance. This thematising of examples which can show the correspondences between the universalism of modernism and the universalism of socialist emancipation, as well as the attempt to re-evaluate these experiences and analyse them in light of new meanings and different constellations are important aspects of David Maljković’s works and our recent research. However, while our curatorial activities – for instance, the modernist sculptor Vojin Bakić’s exhibition in the Gallery Nova in 2007, and, somewhat modified, in the Grazer Kunstverein in 2008 – aimed to contextualise Vojin Bakić’s work in a different manner, and to thematise the status and relations of modernism as we see them today, David Maljković, for his part, is not interested in the phenomenon of modernism in Yugoslavia and Croatia in a general sense. His personal

motivation is to attempt to create new platforms on the ruins of existing grounds. For example, the scene for his series, Scenes for a New Heritage, is a magnificent and devastated monument on Petrova Gora Mountain, on a remote location, a memorial for the greatest Partisan hospital in WW2. The monument is one of the principal realisations of the socialist modernism project, and one of the most important public monuments; Vojin Bakić [1915-1992] had been working on it for more than a decade. In the age of socialism, almost obligatory visits to this monument amounted to a collective social ritual. Maljković finds this location drastically altered; effaced, forgotten and almost decrepit. He interprets it “…as a place of fascinating absence, as a place that was completely absent. If we are to elaborate the facts, we might say that these places do not exist any more, that they exist only in a physical sense. But for me, what was important was the personal memory which tied me to the location, and the historic part, and Bakić’s place in it, all this just started to emerge. I was trying my best to use the empty space of the future.” 01 Opening this cracked, almost invisible space for the future, he was also gradually opening it for various, parallel interpretations. For the first time after several decades in the local milieu, but also internationally, the Scenes for a New Heritage series summoned the work of Vojin Bakić from oblivion, almost literally. Recent Maljković works, shown in this exhibition, entitled Retired Compositions, again refer to some of the most intriguing achievements and protagonists of socialist modernism The manner in which the artist treats the location and its specifics within a wider context directly builds on the experiences of his older works. But, the repertoire is not fixed, it re-mobilizes various gestures and approaches, realizing itself in a dialogue with the specific context. The Retired Form film evokes a public monument complex in the

Memorial Park Dotrščina, dedicated to the victims of WW2 in Zagreb, by sculptor Vojin Bakić. On the one hand, he is perceived as an “authentic” modernist sculptor, the main figure of the break-up with socialist realism who forged the paths for abstraction and freedom of artistic expression in the 1950s, and on the other, as a “state artist” in service to socialist ideology. Bakić is highly acclaimed in official art histories, yet his monuments to the anti-fascist struggle were devastated and destroyed in the heat of the nationalism and antiCommunism of the 90s. Another film, Images With Their Own Shadows, shot at the Vjenceslav Richter museum/estate, directly thematises the work of Vjenceslav Richter [1917-2002], an architect and artist who was a member of the Zagreb art group Exat 51 between 1950 and 1956. As an art group, and as a plastic-spatial concept, Exat 51 was a marker of progressive art activity in the context of Yugoslav socialist modernism. The group proposed to abolish the borders between high art and applied art, emphasizing the concept of progress, the collective aspect of work, experiment, synthesis of art, and the struggle of opinions. 01 | David Maljković in The problematic staconversation with tus of this heritage, its Nataša Ilić, “The marginalisation, and the empty space of lack of its institutional the future”, Almost valorisation, are of eqHere, Kunstverein in ual importance for the Hamburg, Dumont, artist’s research on the 2007 phenomenon of modernism, as well as for our curatorial approach to this subject. As an example of this, we might emphasize the sudden break in the reception of Bakić’s work, closely related to the political climate that marginalised or openly condemned the heritage of socialism, as well as the fact that the reception of the Exat 51 group has been problematic from its inception until today. The function of art institutions, relations of national culture and its international options, and awkward collective relations towards the socialist past are some of the unresolved contradictions

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revisiting modernism david retired novine.indd 3

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that define the understanding of the works of these authors and of the project of socialist modernism in general. This issue of the Gallery Newspapers offers several interviews and texts that we gathered while considering various aspects of socialist modernism that inevitably reflect these themes. Our intention is not to offer an insight into the integral corpus of Yugoslav modernism, which is an exceptionally complex and still under-researched phenomenon, and this is beyond our capabilities. We wished to engage in some burning, open questions about this period, which resonate in the present. In dialogue with the works of David Maljković, which are based on some of the crucial, and still controversial persons and episodes from this period, this edition is meant as a reference point, as an “extended footnote” for the works. We include a modified version of the lecture we gave at the 5th Berlin Biennial this year. Conceived as an attempt to contextualise the heritage of the Exat 51 group and Vojin Bakić in the present, this lecture was written in dialogue with the works of David Maljković, who participated at the Biennial. We wanted to discuss some of the most important issues and problems of modernism with its real protagonists or witnesses of the time, who have been intensively studying this period for a long time. For that reason we talked to Jerko Denegri, a prominent art historian, theoretician and critic, who is one of the greatest experts for the work of the Exat 51 group and Vojin Bakić. Our second interlocutor was Ivan Picelj, an artist who from his personal viewpoint thematises various aspect of the process in which Croatian art production in the second half of the twentieth century was becoming a part of the international modernist scene. As an abstract painter and a member of Exat 51, Ivan Picelj participated in the distancing from the dominant ideology of socialist realism during the fifties, and in the sixties he was among the protagonists of the international movement New Tendencies [Nove tendencije] from Zagreb. With his art activities and personal contacts, Ivan Picelj is an important mediator between his milieu and international art circles.


On this occasion, the artist talks about many international projects, for instance, about the participation of Exat 51 members at the 7th Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in Paris in 1952, about the activities of the Denise René Gallery in Paris, and about the reception of these experiences back home. Our research on the ehxibition Bakic´, Picelj, Srnec held in Denise Rene Gallery in Paris in 1959., was part of the project Société Anonyme in Le Plateau, Paris where on the invitation of the curators Thomas Boutoux, Nataša Petrešin and François Piron we had a month long residency in March 2007. Although the lack of an integral discourse of history and art history, and of the “official” valorisation in our local milieu is an important contextual background of David’s art projects and our curatorial research,

we should mention that our activities are not systematic in the “academic” sense, nor do they aspire to create “objective knowledge”. On the contrary, taking a relevant position that does not avoid the urgent questions of its own identity, these parallel researches offer a particular view and are an invitation for dialogue. This issue of Gallery Newspapers contributes to this continuing process. “Why does yesterday’s masterpiece become tomorrow’s trash?” 02 – as Brian Holmes voiced with painful clarity, taking the state of Vojin Bakić’s heritage as indicative for a wider political diagno- 02 | Brian Holmes: sis – this is one of the “WHW: the process crucial questions that we of becoming”, always encounter in this Maska Performing unfinished voyage. Arts Journal, No. 117-118, Volume XIII, WHW, December 2008 Ljubljana, 2008

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On the set of “Retired Form” 2008, photo David Maljković

It was precisely because of their genuine understanding of the sculptor’s task in making a ‘monument’ that Bakić and some other sculptors gradually came to oppose that vague conception of sculpture prevailing in the Yugoslav academic tradition, along with its various compromises and misunderstandings. These misunderstandings were especially common in the post-Liberation setting. Milan Prelog, “Djelo Vojina Bakića” [ Work of V.B ], Pogledi [1953]

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“Retired Form” collages, 2008. Courtesy Metro Pictures, New York

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modern

& its discontents: croatian avant-garde of the 50s “[...] To those who will unreservedly enthuse over all our creations – we respond that we doubt the sincerity of their enthusiasm. To those who see these works as import, epigony or imitation – although they do not really deserve an answer – we respond that cultural goods belong to the whole of humanity.

Srnec, and architects Vjenceslav Richter, Bernardo Bernardi, Zdravko Bregovac, Zvonimir Radić, and Vladimir Zaharović. The very title of the group – EXAT – abbreviated from Experimental Atelier – makes apparent the desire to take art out to the broader field of social experiment. The group was founded in 1951, or more precisely, on December 7th, 1951, when their first Manifesto was ritualistically read at the yearly plenum of the Croatian Association of Artists of Applied Arts.

To those who are skeptically waiting for history to give its sound judgment, so they could give their own – we respond that fresh fruit is more wholesome than conserved ones. To those who claim that this painting is unsocialist, we respond by asking if they already posses the formula of a socialist painting.

EXAT 51 was publicly and declaratively established through the act of reading the Manifesto, in which they specifically asked for abolishing the frontiers between fine art and applied art, for standing on the side of progress, for the collective aspect of work, for the importance of conditions and social context of artistic practice, for experimentation, for the synthesis of all artistic forms and for free confrontations of opinions.

To those who attentively follow every new attempt Positioning their battle against “outdated ideas and types of production within the field of visual arts” in the immediate proximity their outlook on particular works – we respond by to “social reality and social forces aspiring to attain progress within gratefully acknowledging their attention.” all fields of human activity”, as they proclaimed in their Manifesto, EXAT 51 advocated the ideology of progress, putting under question the essential principle of the autonomy of art, This is an excerpt from the Exhibition attempting to redefine its position in relation to the actual social Manifesto, written for the occasion practice. The text of the Manifesto of the exhibition by Kristl, Picelj, had resulted from long conversations Rašica, and Srnec, and held at the within the group itself, and had Croatian Architects’ Association in been signed collectively and with Zagreb in 1953. This exhibition was the names of the group’s members the first and only exhibition by the EXAT 51 group, an artist group active in alphabetical order. Although during the 6 years of EXAT’s in Zagreb between 1950 and 1956. Members of the EXAT 51 group activities they each signed their works individually, the group acted were painters, those presented at the collectively in building their working exhibition – Vlado Kristl, Božidar platform. The main starting point on Rašica, Ivan Picelj, Aleksandar

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in the field of human progress and who will tell us


which EXAT 51 began constructing its position was based on the reactualization of demands posed by historical avant-garde movements, first of all those of a constructivist tradition. As already mentioned, their only exhibition took place two years later, in 1953, at the Croatian Architects’ Association, and later it was also shown in Belgrade. It was an exhibition of paintings, but their second Manifesto, whose part we read at the beginning, was displayed at the entrance, as a defence and reply to the criticism and attacks to which they had been exposed after public proclamation of their first Manifesto in 1951. In 1953, abstract art was still rather controversial. ★ ★ ★ Another episode crucial in the process of the acceptance of abstract art was the public call for proposals for a monument to Marx and Engels on the square of the same name in Belgrade, the country’s capital at the time, also in 1953, and the uproar caused by the proposal by artist Vojin Bakić.

Vojin Bakić is an artist who, on one hand, has been perceived as an “authentic” modernist sculptor, the main figure of the break-up with soc-realism and proponent of abstraction who forged the paths for freedom of artistic expression in the 1950s, and on the other, as a “state artist” whose art has been servicing ideology; one who has been highly acclaimed in official art histories, yet his monuments to the anti-fascist struggle were devastated in the heat of nationalism and anti-communism of the 90s. But let’s go back to his 1953 proposal for the monument to Marx and Engels. Although rejected by a jury composed of writers Milan Bogdanović from Serbia, Miroslav

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ism

It was actually a typical photograph of our grandfathers from the turn of the century, in which one would usually sit and the other stand. I was somehow attracted by that simple posture – that is why Engels is standing, while Marx is sitting, holding a book. By the way, while I was working on it, it soon dawned on me that using the form as it was – which meant solving the drapery in a naturalistic way – was out of the question! Especially since I knew that the monument was to be made of granite and – nine meters tall. Of course, it was a tiny detail, rather insignificant, but the idea could not be sustained in that form and it was necessary to cut into the volume bluntly... That realistic, even a bit impressionistic way, actually meant detaching myself from the true problem of sculpture, which I was actually trying to get back to!! Vojin Bakić, from the interview “Vraćanje skulptorskim principima” [ Back to the principles of sculpture ], JUL [ 1969 ]


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Vojin Bakić: drawing for the monument to Marx and Engels, 1953. Courtesy Bakić family

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Krleža from Croatia, and Josip Vidmar from Slovenia – this proposal played a crucial role in the process of freeing monumental sculpture from academic realism. The rejection of that rather benign sculpture, with its moderate leanings towards the formal solutions of cubism, resulted in a scandal in which young critics stood in its defence. The importance of the episode certainly does not lie within the inherent artistic qualities of Bakić’s sculpture, but in the fact that to commemorate the fathers of Marxism, a formal repertoire of the artistic movement that had just recently ceased to be stigmatized for its bourgeois decadency, had been chosen. Acceptance of abstraction was not easy and monumental sculpture would only slowly get out from the firm embrace of academism.

The changes in culture were gradual, but nonetheless dramatic. In 1949, the main party ideologist Edvard Kardelj proclaimed withdrawal of the Party from cultural affairs. To prove its attempt to open communication channels in both ways, in 1950 Yugoslavia took part in the Venice Biennial [and Vojin Bakić, along with three other sculptors, took part with his impressionist portrait of partisan poet Ivan Goran Kovačić and his model for the Monument to Partisans Executed by a Firing Squad in the city of Bjelovar]. From 1950 to 1954, fervent debates about the proper expression of socialist ideas took place.

01 | See Ljiljana Kolešnik, Između Istoka i Zapada, Hrvatska umjetnost i likovna kritika 50-ih godina [Between East and West, Croatian art and art criticism in the ‘50s], Institute for Art History, Zagreb, 2006.

In other versions of the story of the “historical break up with soc-realism”, the year 1951 is also very important, but not because of the establishment of EXAT 51, rather because it is also the year when painter Edo Murtić, with apparent support by the Yugoslav state, went on a study trip to the USA and Canada, where he stayed until 1953.

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To understand the intensity of the polemics that something as benign as a public sculpture or painting exhibition might have sparked off in 1953 in Zagreb and in the broader cultural space of Yugoslavia, some historical background is in order. The political situation in Yugoslavia up to 1948 had been characterized by membership in the communist bloc. Due to his organizational and military capacities during the people’s liberation struggle, the leader of the Yugoslav party, Josip Broz Tito, managed to gain the respect of Western allies and a high level of coherence within the Party regarding its decision to keep the country completely independent in domestic and foreign policy, with close collaboration with the USSR in all other areas. As Stalin could not agree to these terms that posed a threat to the monolith of the Eastern Bloc, in 1948, after the Informbiro resolution, the Yugoslav Party broke off all diplomatic, economic and military ties between Yugoslavia and USSR. After that, Tito, who in 1947 declined

participation in the Marshall Plan, turned towards the West and accepted US financial aid.01

His leaving Yugoslavia was not without ideological connotations, and the painterly series Impressions of America he produced while on that study trip was displayed immediately upon his return to Zagreb and Belgrade as an important political event of the “historical denouncing” of the theory of soc-realism and spreading the idea of freedom in socialism. Obviously, in local circumstances these paintings that never crossed into abstraction were far easier to accept than the ideas of EXAT 51 or Bakić’s understanding of sculpture. Generally, with the demission of soc-realism, its place in the mainstream was taken over by “socialist realism in a humanistic way”, meaning non-conflicting academic modernism which could link


just nicely to the national traditions between the two wars. In any case, until the beginning of the 60s, the process of liberating from soc-realism came to the stage where culture and art could no longer be controlled from the positions of political discourse, and a new system of cultural values emerged. In 1956, the broadcasting of TV Zagreb started with the live coverage of the opening ceremony of the Zagreb Fair, on the south bank of the Sava River. The following year, in 1957, just a few months after the first in a series of meetings between Josip Broz Tito, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Gamal Abdel Nasser and the signing of the Brioni Statement with which the Non-Aligned Movement officially became a world-wide

organization, the construction of the first neighbourhood of high-rise apartment buildings started in Novi Zagreb [New Zagreb], the newer part of the city south of the river. Thus began the transformation of the rural area of satellite villages into modernist city quarters with a high density. In Novi Zagreb, neighbourhood after neighbourhood was built throughout the 60s and the 70s according to the modernist zoning principles of the Athens Charter, and tenants’ rights for thousands of apartments were given to workers. Many of the optimistic goals of the urban planners were never accomplished – what was notorious was the lack of sports and cultural facilities, and on many occasions Novi Zagreb was referred

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The EXAT 51 Group

sees no connection between the actual framework of our artistic commitment on the one hand, and the space concept arising from a coordinated relationship between the productive and the

sees no difference between so-called pure and so-called applied

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social standard on the other;

art; considers that work methods and principles in the sphere of non-figural, or so-called abstract art, are no the expression of decadent aspirations, but, rather, thinks that the study of these methods and principles could develop and enrich the sphere of visual communication in our country; the Group intends to operate in actual time and space, assuming plastic requirements and potentials as a tentative point of departure: by understanding our reality as an aspiration to progress in all forms of human activities, the Group believes in the need for struggle against outdated ideas and activities in the fine arts; finally, the Group considers their major task to be, first, focusing on artistic activity on the synthesis of all fine arts, and, second, emphasizing the experimental character of artistic activity, because any progress in a creative approach to fine arts is inconceivable without experiment; we consider the foundation and activity of the Group to be the positive outcome of the development of difference of opinion, which is a necessary prerequisite for the promotion of artistic life in the country. Bernardo Bernardi, architect; Zdravko Bregovac, architect; Ivan Picelj, painter; Božidar Rašica, architect; Vjenceslav Richter, architect; Aleksandar Srnec, painter; Vladimir Zarahović, architect The EXAT 51 Group Manifesto read by Bernardi at the plenary meeting of Artists of Applied Arts, December 7, 1951.


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to as the sleeping quarters of the city. But social ownership of the agricultural land enabled large-scale urban planning interventions, and in contrast to present-day urban developments, great care was given to green areas, distance among buildings, and childcare and educational facilities. Conceived as the largest post-WW2 development of the city, Novi Zagreb housed all strata of society, and whole generations born in the 60s and 70s grew up here. The Zagreb Fair became the central point of Novi Zagreb, as well as one of the prominent new symbols of ‘vigorous growth’ 02 and post-war reconstruction of the city, epitomizing the optimism of this time of economic prosperity, strong international alliances, and new technology. It was one of the focal points of the city economy, and still based on the World’s Fair model, it featured numerous permanent national pavilions, as well as experimental temporary exhibition structures.

02 | Phrase taken from the official site of the Zagreb Fair, http://www.zv.hr.

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This slow advancement toward modernity continued until the ‘Croatian spring’ movement in 1971, in many ways already announced by student protests in 1968, which, unlike most of the other European student protests of ’68, had distinctively conservative and nationalistic elements. The questions of modernism and modernization had been suppressed by national political movements, nationalism, discussions on national languages and the like, while the imposed dilemma over the conflict between the unitaristic/centralized or federal/decentralized conception of the development of Yugoslav society mirrors the moment of economic stagnation, after a decade of strong economic growth. Further work on the consistent development of the concept of workers’ self-management was slowly abandoned and the system


increasingly bureaucratized. But during the 50s, the articulation of modernist aspirations were modified to suit the new historical conditions in which the harmonious, humanistic society was not just a utopian projection, but the prime objective of Yugoslav socialism. Ideas of universal modernist progress had been interconnected with a specific understanding of socialism as a potentially radical, experimental modernistic concept par excellance. This is exactly why the reception of the modernistic practice of EXAT 51 and Vojin Bakić repeatedly proves to be so problematic. The problematic relation towards the legacy of socialist decades of a society that had imposed collective mystification and oblivion to the archive of politics, economy and style of the failed project of socialist society, is certainly crucial for understanding the context of the reception of avant-garde modernism of the 50s. In the case of Vojin Bakić, grand narrative understands him as the propagator of abstraction who struggled for the freedom of artistic expression, and his use of clean abstract forms is interpreted as a victory of art not only over socialist dogma, but also over ideology in general. What such an understanding fails to comprehend is the fact that modernism is not a monolith construction nor is it ideologically empty; notions of artistic freedom and autonomy of art are only

seemingly disconnected from ideology and politics. Neutralization of art as a means of social critique, performed through the demission of avant-garde, and the possibility of inputting precise ideological messages into the self-referential form of high modernism, without direct “program intervention” on behalf of the centres of political power and without open violation of the institution of autonomous art, was politically functional both in the West and in ex-Yugoslavia. The break up with social realism in Yugoslavia and its explanations and implications is interesting not only because Yugoslavia was the only socialist country that cut off relations to the Eastern bloc, relaxed ideological barriers and culturally opened up towards the West. It is also interesting as a cultural space in which parts of the communist political and cultural elite recognized the correspondences between the universalism of modernist art and the universalism of socialist emancipation. The abandoning of social realism in Yugoslavia was not an act of artists-heroes, brave individuals, as it is often claimed, but the result of Party politics after the resolution of the Informbiro and the break up with Stalin. There are many indications that Yugoslavia had clear cultural politics in which the ideological separation from the USSR and Eastern bloc supplemented strong modernizing impulses with modernism in culture.

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“Kristl, Picelj, Rašica, Srnec” exhibition poster, Architects’ Society of Croatia, Zagreb 1953, design: Ivan Picelj

13 Manifesto of the KRISTL — PICELJ — RAŠICA — SRNEC Exhibition

to those who are surprised by the mode of expression in this painting we reply that they are forty years late for those who express their indignation at the introduction of something they had assessed, in their youth, as absurd and unacceptable, our question is: do not the persistence and long standing of the artistic expression drive them to re-assess their judgment ? to those, who will, without more ado, show enthusiasm for all of our work – we reply that we doubt the sincerity of their enthusiasm to those who consider these works to be imports, epigonism and imitation although we really need not reply, we reply that cultural goods are the property of all mankind to those who skeptically await that safe judgment of history before expressing their own – we reply that fresh fruit is healthier than canned fruit to those who claim that this painting is non-socialist, our question is: do they already posses the formula of socialist painting? to those who follow with interest every new effort in the sphere of human progress, and who will convey to us their judgment and individual works - we reply thanking them for their interest. In the studio of Ivan Picelj [Aleksandar Srnec, Ivan Picelj, Vlado Kristl, Božidar Rašica], Zagreb, October, 1953


KRISTL – PICELJ – RAŠICA – SRNEC Exhibition was held from 18 February to 4 March 1953 in the Architects’ Society of Croatia

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Salon 54 – Exhibition of contemporary Yugoslav painting and sculpture, poster, Art Galery, Rijeka 1954. Design Ivan Picelj

“Vojin Bakić”, Gallery Nova, Zagreb, June 2007, installation view

14 It is certainly necessary to get rid of cultural-racist prejudices about communism as something produced by the ethnical Other, and to abandon banal clichés, still held by local art history, about strong social realism and the struggle for modern art as a certain form of resistance to endangered bourgeois society. One has to take into account that after WW2, the leading people of the Yugoslav Communist Party and the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia within the general modernization movement not only tolerated modern – meaning abstract – art, but obviously supported it. A schematic presentation of the clash between dogmatic soc-realism and progressive modernistic tendencies is not true, but that does not mean that modernism was accepted without much resistance. The current revisionist view inscribes into post-WW2 Yugoslavian abstraction the tendency of “restoration of belonging to the Western European cultural circle” and understands modernism as a certain continuity of “bourgeois” culture. But this view fails to comprehend that exactly this bourgeois, traditionalist culture prone to academism strongly resisted modernistic tendencies, and that modernism stands on the position of social change, that ideologically it is closer to the socialist project than to bourgeois culture. That does not mean that modernist artists were necessarily Party men. It is not about mere manipulation and the instrumentalization of modernistic tendencies for political needs related to Yugoslavia’s separation from the Soviet bloc. In modernist abstraction, enlightened communist consciousness saw closeness to the universalism of modern emancipatory politics. Those artists were not modernist because they were communists following the Party line, but as modernists they were necessarily leftists, anti-fascists, socialists, and communists. The fact that Vojin Bakić used the same formal repertoire to


simultaneously create a global cosmopolitan cultural identity and collective memory of socialist Yugoslavia is thus not a paradox but the true face of modernism. The point is not to neutralize or reconcile contrasted views on modernism, but to understand them within the dynamics of their relations, to see contradictions as inherent to modernism itself, and to explore their specifics in the given cultural space. The ideological battle over modernism in socialist Yugoslavia and its legacy and importance today is exactly that which can not be left to institutions, and what needs to be taken over and invested with new meanings. That is the reason why WHW organized Vojin Bakić’s solo exhibition, in the public, city-owned Gallery Nova in Zagreb in June 2007, thus intervening in the highly restricted and institutionally guarded area of high modernism. That was the artist’s first solo exhibition after 41 years [the last one happened in his hometown Bjelovar in 1966]. The set up pointed to the objective state and frustration over the significant parts of the modernist heritage. The exhibition was not really accessible to visitors. Bakić’s sculptures could be seen only through the gallery windows, and twice a week the gallery opened its doors for guided tours led by art historians, curators, critics or artists. In a separate space, an archive was set up, which in the form of a timeline contextualized his work in a broader social and artistic context, comprised of press and TV documentation, with quotes from the most important critical texts on Bakić and photos from his family archive. This part

of the exhibition was open during regular working hours. Showing his sculptures in a locked gallery, behind glass, was not a conceptual pun, provocation or self-absorbed curatorial joke, but the outcome of very real limitations – on one hand, the conditions the sculptures were in, i.e. in urgent need of restoration; and on the other, the setting of a small non-profit gallery with an insufficient security infrastructure and an extremely tight budget. The framework that defines the contemporary understanding of EXAT 51 is similarly complicated by the questions about the relations of ‘socialist modernism’ to the meganarrative of Western high modernism and the non-homogeneity and complexities of local art practices. Although there are some possible trajectories – like the Bauhaus tradition and local history of dada and post-cubism, in view of the continuity broken by WW2, EXAT 51 has no predecessors and its activities mark a new beginning rather than a renewal of continuity. The problematic reading of EXAT 51 on one hand had been shaped by the ideologically shallow position and superficial argumentation based on anti-communist resentment, while some critics claim that EXAT simply does not bring anything new or avantgarde, that it is an eclectic movement based on the repetition of certain solutions of geometric abstraction. (These critics point to the fact that the ideas developed by the members of EXAT 51 fit into a broader art praxis of great artistic synthesis that is supposed to encompass the totality of life. Many similar tendencies and artistic attempts

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Zagreb International Fair, 1960’s

15 were happening in Europe, such as Forma Uno [Rome, 1947], Movimento arte concreta [Milan, 1948], Arte d’oggy [Florence 1950], with whom the members of EXAT 51 had no contact whatsoever. More direct parallels might be drawn between the group Espace, formed in 1951 and under the intellectual guidance of Le Corbusier which promoted the idea of the synthesis of arts, but EXAT 51 came to know of its activity only in 1952 when they exhibited at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in Paris.) In that view, the real avant-garde is Croatian enformel, which developed almost simultaneously as in European – meaning Western European – art, which basically reads as a ‘catching up’ of historically undeveloped margins with developments in art centres, thus failing to comprehend the fact that the practice of EXAT 51 radically left behind the dominant paradigm of the ‘centre-periphery’ and developed its own specific reaction to universal questions of social developments in the period of industrial modernization. A more interesting question is why the official art system of the 50s, which functioned in direct ideological connection to the state apparatus, pushed EXAT 51 into the background, and why its reception in the broader public was complicated? During the 50s, EXAT was at the very limit of unacceptability in local circles. After the reading of the Manifesto in 1951, their first and only gallery exhibition in the period while the group was active took place in 1953, and in the years between ’51 and ’53 they took part in public discussions and exhibited unofficially, in the studio of EXAT 51 member, the painter Ivan Picelj. Only the next wave of neo-constructivist art in the early 60s will recognize EXAT as a crucial local reference of the international avant-garde movement of New Tendencies, whose organizational and creative centre was Zagreb. But New Tendencies is yet another story. [Currently, it is being presented at the exhibition


bit international. [Nove] tendencije / Computer and Visual Research / Zagreb 1961-1973 in ZKM in Karlsruhe, while we in Zagreb will obviously have to wait for a chance to see it]. But why was the project of total design and synthesis of all arts, as propagated by EXAT 51, not acceptable to the system? Perhaps because the artistic anti-dogmatism of the group was an indicator of a far more progressive involvement with the ideals of socialism than was the case with the bureaucratic apparatus in power. And this is why the activities of EXAT 51 sparked tensions and risks, not because of the pressure of soc-realism that had already lost its battle in Yugoslavia. Also problematic was their affirmation of the accomplishments of “bourgeois” abstract art on one hand, and of the Soviet experience of constructivist avant-garde on the other, at the moment when Yugoslavia was attempting to politically emancipate itself from the Soviet Union. In that context, it is important to stress that EXAT did not succeed in the realization of their synthetic projects. After controversies triggered by the reading of their Manifesto in 1951, the group publicly acted discursively, and together with those texts, the architecture and design of Yugoslav pavilions at world expos are the only material on the basis of which we can speculate the directions in which the realization of the synthetic understanding of art might have developed under different circumstances. Picelj, Richter and Srnec developed a number of architectural designs for Yugoslav pavilions at trade fairs around the world, in which Yugoslavia attempted to ambitiously present its economic growth and recovery after the WW2. These pavilions [Stockholm, Vienna, Brussels...], as well as the exhibition setups, like those of the exhibition Highway of Brotherhood and Unity,

shown in Zagreb and Belgrade in 1950, the exhibition Industry of the Democratic Republic of Germany presented at the Zagreb Fair, or the exhibition Books in Croatia, abolish the division between fine, pure art and applied art, stripping visual language of any literary ballast and realizing a total plastic fact in material and space. Documentation on these projects is relatively poor, but sufficient to enable an understanding of the aspect of totality pursued in the work of EXAT 51. Paradoxically, the most concrete traces of EXAT 51 are within painting, which in many ways was secondary for the programmatic intentions of artistic synthesis. The question whether painting was understood only as a model, as one component of the unachieved wholeness and synthesis, or if it had an autonomous and finalized value within a certain art system, still remains open. But for our contemporary understanding of achievements and the importance of EXAT 51, the very paintings and aesthetic objects are not of primary concern. Rather, what is more important is the specific ethics and politics of the group, expressed discursively and in heated polemics. In the words of Ivan Picelj, one of the painters in EXAT 51: “It was not enough to create a work. We had to defend it. It was confrontation.” Apparently today, Croatia is a country in which the antagonisms that deeply stratified society throughout the 90s have been temporarily suspended and nationalistic rhetoric has certainly been watered down, but the basic understanding of culture has not changed at all. The cultural domain is still characterized by the logic of identity, particularly national identity – and a lot is at stake in the understanding of the legacy of EXAT 51. For us, it lies first of all in the production of a specific understanding of Yugoslav society after WW2, in the production of

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View from the Avenue Mall to the construction site of Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, 2008 photo: Goran Vujasninović

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Vojin Bakić in front of sculpture by Hans Arp, Meudon, 1958 photo: Ivan Picelj

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discourse on art and its social role that stepped out of the dominant paradigm of centre and periphery and addressed the universal questions of social development. In that sense, at least at the level of the project – EXAT points toward the possibility of what abstract art as an international movement could have been – continued in the project of social change and radical transformation of the very function of art in society. In the context of the Cold War and bipolar image of the world, dominant American art theory goes back to the ideas of artistic autonomy, in order to protect ‘avant-garde’, ‘progressive’, ‘Abstract’, ‘modern’ art from accusations of communism, antiAmerican activities and the like. Of course, this seemingly apolitical turn of abstract art is deeply politicized and has political consequences. And that is exactly why EXAT 51 is important – it appears as an indication of a possibility of modern, abstract art to keep its socially engaged position, holding that art and artists have an important role in the creation of contemporary – socialist – society. The ‘EXAT case’ proves that the hegemonic conception of high modernism based on the individuality and autonomy of art, supposedly free of political ideological pressures, was only one of the possible conceptions of modernism that due more to nonartistic reasons managed to occupy a dominant position. Because of the convergence of many various social, political and also economic reasons, the very concept of EXAT 51 could not achieve its full realization, but as an historical event it certainly significantly marked art, architecture and design in socialist Yugoslavia. The practical failure to realize its goals does not diminish the importance of EXAT 51 as an artistic, social and cultural fact of the time, but rather should be seen as a typical symptom and embodiment of the ‘failure’ as an inherent and authentic modernistic gesture. In terms of cultural geo-politics and the constant “discovery of


the art of former Eastern Europe” that happened in different waves and with different focuses, but regularly burdened with a level of related problems of hegemonic understanding of the periphery from the centre, it might be useful to remember that, for example, Jürgen Klaus in his book Kunst Heute in 1965 mentions EXAT 51 within the context of groups like Espace, MAC, and Madi from Buenos Aires. The 60s were also the peak of the valorization of Vojin Bakić in international art history – after exhibiting at the Venice Biennial in 1956, the World Expo in Brussels in 1958, the Denise René Gallery in Paris in 1959 [with Ivan Picelj and Alexander Srnec, members of EXAT], Documenta in 1959 etc., he was included in histories of modern sculpture by Michel Seuphor, Herbert Read, Udo Kulterman and the like. Still, the fact remains that although the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia after its break with social realism really did not belong in the Soviet circle of Eastern European art in which the shift from socialist realism took different routes, its position ‘Between East and West’ [which is also the title of the recently published book by Ljiljana Kolešnik, offering a comprehensive view into Croatian art of the 50s] did not grant it full-fledged membership in the world of Westkunst. This is not only due to the hegemonic position of the West, but also to real differences in the way art in Yugoslavia was organized and how its role in society had been understood. And this selfunderstanding was forged in the 50s, in many ways through the practices of EXAT 51, Vojin Bakić and others. ★ ★ ★ As for Novi Zagreb, the two paradigmatic buildings of our time being built just across each other and a couple of hundred meters from the Zagreb Fair are symptomatic for the fate of socialist modernism. One is the Museum of Contemporary

Art, whose construction started in 2003 and whose completion date was originally set for 2006, but whose building is still dragging on, stalled by the incompetence of state administration, aggravated by fighting between the City of Zagreb and the Ministry of Culture, currently under control by two different political parties. The other building is Avenue Mall just across the street, which was completed in a mere 18 months, and which according to its web site, boasts 130 stores, a 9-screen cinema, a 3.400 m2 supermarket, and an impressive number of 25.000 visitors daily. The centre of economy may not have moved very far but it has completely changed its character. As much as it was about commerce, the function of the Zagreb Fair was primarily rooted in the presentation of industrial development, while today the interface of production, as well as public imagination, has moved completely to the consumerism of the mall and adjacent Museum, which depends on its proximity to the Mall for the phantom of audiences. ★ ★ ★ At the end, we would like to mention that it is certainly not incidental that the works of David Maljković use the materials and locations of Vojin Bakić, EXAT 51 and the Zagreb Fair. In many ways, this lecture has been devised as background information for his work, but also as an interpretative trajectory along which his works are inscribed in the objective state and frustration over the modernist heritage of socialist Yugoslavia – we cannot approach it directly, and if we attempt to do that, we are not completely sure what to do with it. ”

Lecture by WHW, within the ‘Mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours’ night program of the 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art, April 2008

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“Freeze Images” charcoal on paper and letterset, 2007, 62,2 × 50,8cm, Courtesy Metro Pictures, New York

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“Kristl, Picelj, Rašica, Srnec” exhibition, installation view, Architects’s Society of Croatia, Zagreb 1953

thirties, fostered particularly within the framework of

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The seed sown in the early

Functionalist theory and through the activity of the Zagreb architects, the seed that germinated secretively in ideas of ideal fusion of the revolution and art, and finally, the revival of geometrical abstraction on an international scale after 1945 – all this created the prerequisites for EXAT as it appeared in Zagreb in the early fifties. Želimir Koščević, in Denegri / Koščević, “EXAT 51, 1951-56”, Galerija Nova, Centar za kulturnu djelatnost saveza socijalističke omladine Zagreba, Zagreb, 1979


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“Lost Memories from These Days” collages, 2006-08. Courtesy Annet Gelink, Amsterdam and Metro Pictures, New York

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The extensive programme of EXAT’s members, at the time when the very first major steps were being taken in the industrializatiion of the country under the conditions of material and technical underdevelopment, appeared as a need for programmed cultural development, but could not be accepted simply because of the lack of such development, that is, because it was impossible to find, in the given circumstances, direct ways for its actualization. Moreover, the drive and enthusiasm aroused in cultural circles was aimed primarily at expanding and releasing mental and emotional burdens and tensions, and at a much more idealistic and in fact romantic image of artist’s function, which was, after all, supported throughout the world. Matko Meštrović, Singularity and Universality - a View of Yougoslav Painting at the Last Decade, “Kolo”, nr 2, Zagreb, February, 1964


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Opening of the Ivan Picelj “Ombre, nombre” exhibition at Galerie Denise René, Paris 1982

23 The practical position of the members of EXAT are: abstract art, and their prospective programme: the integration and synthesis of all aspects of the plastic art. The stylistic tendencies of the group were deeply rooted in the truly current and topical problems in the world of art at that time, and the final consequence of their views were culturally more farreaching than could be realized and recognized at first. Radoslav Putar, From the Liberation to the Present Day, catalogue of the exhibition

picelj • zagreb-paris david retired novine.indd 23

“Sixty Years of Painting and Sculpture in Croatia”, Art Pavilion, Zagreb, March, 1961

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WHW in conversation with JERKO DENEGRI

WHW Ϙ We could start with the Salon des

Réalités Nouvelles, which you highlight as the first unofficial presentation of our artists. Can you tell us what the climate was in which this could happen, and what were the reactions here and in Paris?

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DENEGRI Ϙ When post-war Paris art life was in the process of being restored – in addition to what was going on in the galleries, and some of them were very important, for instance the Drouin Gallery, and afterwards the Denise René Gallery – art life in general was unfolding through several salons. For example, there was the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, namely, new realities as abstract art. This was not a salon of realist art; the realist artists were called “Witnesses of their time”, figurative artists gathered around the Communist Party. There was also the May Salon, which was a very democratic institution. The Salon des Réalités Nouvelles was exclusive, i.e. it covered abstract art exclusively. In the post-war time, geometric abstraction prevailed. The participation of the three artists, Rašica, Srnec, and Picelj, in the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles was facilitated by the architect Jocić, who lived in Paris and his connections enabled their participation in the Salon. Picelj has the catalogue and the documentation about this. You can imagine how important it was that these artists participated in the Salon! This was 1952, the age of socialist realism, which was not only a style in art, it was much more, it was a whole organization of art life with controlled associations, various forums, the agit-prop. To participate abroad, to sidestep all the juries, all the overseeing, all the forums, this was a heroic gesture in terms of free thinking, if we are to interpret it in this way. Despite the fact that there were hundreds of members in various Salons des Réalités Nouvelles, it was not an exclusive manifestation. Today, there are some views that this kind of abstract art was not so important, considering the fact that the first great post-war movement that really carried the psychosis of the post-war art was, in reality, enformel. Geometric abstraction is considered to be a reflection of pre-war phenomena, such as Abstraction-Création. During the thirties there were two associations that fostered the tradition or influences of Mondrian and Kandinsky, and they were rather marginalized


in this Paris milieu, where Paris schools were dominant, with the myths of Modigliani, Soutin, Picasso, and the like. There is no doubt that the participation of young artists from this region in such a salon in 1952 was a gesture of courage, and the first indication that someone wanted these artists, all the more so considering the fact that they had sidestepped institutional authorities. What must be said about geometric abstraction is that it was not a minor phenomenon, although nowadays it may seem like it was. It was not inferior to anything in Paris, compared to what appeared later in the form of lyric abstraction, e.g. Soulages… It was a by-current. One should not belittle this context, to which Exat partially belongs. WHW Ϙ What was the standing of the Denise René Gallery when Picelj was in Paris? DENEGRI Ϙ The Denise René Gallery was a little tentative at the beginning, only to soon specialize in geometric abstraction, while carrying some authors that were crucial for the whole program, e.g. Arp and Vasarely, who were very important and had much influence on the program. The gallery specialised exclusively in “cold abstraction” in contrast to lyrical abstraction, which was “hot”. During the fifties, there were debates between these two options or currents. Georges Mathieu endorsed lyric abstraction because he did gestural painting on large surfaces, as did the critic Charles Etienne, who wrote the first text in which he claimed that geometric abstraction was the new academism. Then the onset of lyric abstraction began. The early fifties were marked by lyric and geometric abstraction, although there were also other phenomena, but on the wings of abstraction, these two currents won, we might say, on the market. Generally speaking, lyric abstraction won, in a way, because it had spread more easily. The artists who accepted free procedures were more numerous. However, it is not easy to do geometry, not only in the technical sense. You must be mentally fit, too. And it really wanes in some bad variants. In good ones – and this is Exat’s worldview – it signifies a call for a post-war restoration of society and of material and spiritual existence. This is its meaning, and in this sense it is a European phenomenon. It emerged in many

socialism is not about power, 1/7/09 8:19:02 AM

25 countries: in Italy, England, Germany. It was in this context that Exat worked. It was difficult to historically rehabilitate Exat here. The dominant opinion was always that what was being introduced was already forty years old, because that was the time that had passed since Kandinsky and Mondrian. In our country, when conservative circles comment on what the young are doing, they always tell you that they have seen it already… However, with a little more knowledge about the European scene, one would see that there are parallel and ideologically, or better, ideatically related phenomena. In France there is the Espace group, with almost identical grounds that Exat had. WHW Ϙ Was there any communication

between Exat and Espace? DENEGRI Ϙ I think not. Picelj was the only one who would know something about the whole scene. From those days until now, he was a traveller and a man who knows many people in many circles. Others couldn’t know this, not even Richter, who may have had other information and knowledge. He was older than all the others, and in a way he was the leader with some ideas, in terms of synthesis. But the connections with the Denise René Gallery were exclusively Picelj’s. So he was able to do the Bakić, Picelj, Srnec exhibition… He cared. Many others did not. After a while, he was working for the Denise René Gallery and did some graphic design, he earned some money that way, and it provided him with some kind of material independence. Here, the purchase commissions reigned, and life was hard. This is why I think it was important: not to record a bizarre reference but to have a kind of psychological safety, to have a base, and in Picelj’s case, also a material one. Then you are independent from various perturbations on the domestic scene, you don’t have to worry if somebody will buy your works for state institutions, or includes you in this or that show. You just don’t care any more. You have a somewhat more exclusive position, and it is stronger, and in any case more attractive than being a part of some union of visual artists that does nothing but organize its spring and autumn shows. WHW Ϙ In the Parisian context, when the

“Bakić, Picelj, Srnec” show was held in 1959,

to what extent was the social aspect of Exat’s program important for the Denise René Gallery? What was the reception in that sense? DENEGRI Ϙ I believe that the idea of Exat must have been close to Denise René herself, and to the authors gathered around the gallery, which means they had inherited the vision of Mondrian, De Stijl, that is, this kind of ideology. However, one must consider that this was going on in the Paris milieu, within the gallery system, within a society that restored itself as a bourgeois society after WWII, in which the idea of geometry, Russian Constructivism-style, which ultimately propounded the revolution not only in the art world but in society too, could not have any role in the context of Western society. The artists gathered around the Denise René Gallery understood themselves as inheritors of an idea that had social foundations, but this was only a gallery, an exclusive island in this whole, restored gallery system, and it could count on the same channels as other galleries, on its buyers, on its sales. These ideas could be revived in manifestos, but they could not cause such consequences as it was expected to happen in the Soviet Union in the time of original, heroic constructivism. It was a well-established gallery system after all.

Aware of the significance of a composite approach to art, they tried to instituonalize their activity on two occasions; for the first time, with partial success, in 1952, when the Academy of Applied Arts was founded in Zagreb; the second occasion, a more successful one, involved the foundation, in 1956, of the Industrial Design Studio, which would later become the Industrial Design Centre, in

WHW Ϙ To what extent did the exhibition

Zagreb. EXAT and especially its

differ from the official Yugoslav representation? And did it have any reaction, any resonance?

architects can be said to have

DENEGRI Ϙ This exhibition was very different from all other Yugoslav presentations, which were generally more massive, which more or less adequately described the situation on the whole scene. Such an exclusive show, reduced to the three artists who are so similar as to form almost a single tendency – there were no other shows like this. The other shows were based on a pluralist idea: both figurative and abstract artists, both kinds. The Bakić, Picelj, Srnec show was a unique case in all this. The fact that it was held in the Denise René Gallery somehow gave it the program of the gallery. The catalogue was written by Michel Seuphor, a very prominent author. One of his books was published in Zagreb and translated by Radoslav Putar, and this book was the Bible for all of us in those days. Seuphor had an authority; he was a person from pre-war Paris, the creator of the first

laid the foundations for the study of design in Yugoslavia, and for the application of this complex discipline to everyday assignments. Želimir Koščević, in Denegri / Koščević, “EXAT 51, 1951-56”, Galerija Nova, Centar za kulturnu djelatnost saveza socijalističke omladine Zagreba, Zagreb, 1979

, but about interpersonal relations david retired novine.indd 25

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protagonists of the Paris School who had lost the battle with American art, whose penetration was facilitated by undoubtedly great and genial artists, like Rothko, Newman, Pollock, De Koonig and others. This situation was very unfavourable for the early geometry, which then looked like a really ancient story.

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WHW Ϙ Was this the reason that Exat did not hold any shows from 1951, when they publicly read their manifesto at the session of the Croatian Association of Artists of Applied Arts, until 1953?

The awareness of the Group members of the need for a different channeled creative

texts on Mondrian, and one of the founders of the Abstraction-Création group. He was already in his advanced years, a living witness of a heroic age, and when he wrote, it didn’t matter if it was a courteous or analytic text: all his texts were pregnant with a polemic tone against lyric abstraction.

effort and art in general was

of Bauhaus and De Stijl. This

WHW Ϙ He really attacked them. DENEGRI Ϙ Yes, and it gave the resulting impression that these groups, the geometrists, Exat, the three, were an intolerant and militant community which revolted against anything and everything. But this text was still an important reference, despite the fact that Denise René probably commissioned the text from Seuphor.

ideological heritage already

WHW Ϙ He had a nice name for them: “Cell-

pointed the way to progressive

DENEGRI Ϙ There is a militant streak in this. They were maybe glad that proponents of this kind of art were everywhere. For instance, an exhibition of Polish art was held at Denise René, and Malevich was also a part of it because of his Polish ancestry.

based on the revolutionary traditions of the post-October avant-garde, on the tradition

batteries that never get empty”.

conceptual and methodological practice, the more so as the most radical transformations

DENEGRI Ϙ There was a period of fourteen months between the publication of the manifesto and their show in February 1953. What was happening during this time? There is an interpretation that says this was the reason why Murtić was in America then, working on his An Impression of America cycle. The political bureaucracy was waiting for him to return, to bring back abstract art that would declare the country as having definitively rejected socialist realism, and this art was to be lyric and gestural abstraction that corresponded with the American model better than Exat did, because Exat had its roots in Russian heritage, although it was opposed to socialist realism on a declarative level. The political elite here was of the opinion that all this cultural heritage was to be left aside, even the Russian avant-garde, and that the cultural and political reorganization should be oriented towards the West. In this perspective, Exat somehow lost its attractiveness. But is this correct? Murtić himself claimed that this was not correct, that he was not sent to America with this intention, that this was his personal voyage, that he had other intentions, but it is true that he returned with his famous show, An Impression of America, which was not abstract, although there were some free renditions in it. Very interesting debates are still being held about this.

WHW Ϙ You mentioned the antagonism

in the field of the plastic arts occurred at a time of revolutionary transformation in society, in the first years after the October Revolution. By following-up – after a long historical gap – this, very best ideological heritage of the first half of the century, the EXAT 51 makes its main assignment ‘directing activities in art toward synthesis of the visual arts’ and ‘giving an experimental character to their work’. Vera Horvat-Pintarić, Vjenceslav Richter, Grafički zavod Hrvatske, Zagreb, 1970


between lyric and geometric abstraction that marked the fifties. Which political implications were in the background of this aesthetic conflict? DENEGRI Ϙ This story concerns not only the Paris scene, but the global scene as well, where American art and its expansion played an enormous role. Today it is known that lyric abstraction, and especially abstract expressionism, was conceived as a matrix of individualism which is peculiar to the American worldview. In the context of the Cold War, to promote abstract expressionism meant to promote the expressionism of a strong ego, contrary to the collectivist ideas, which could be characteristic of Communist-type ideologies. The geometric abstractionists were mostly leftists, members of the Communist Party of France. In the context of the Cold War, this caused a resistance to Exat, because people thought that Exat was a collectivistic concept, close to the ruling regime, although this was a simplified and superficial understanding. But this matrix of lyric abstraction as an expression of individuality prevailed, galleries accepted it more easily, and the circle of people who had seen themselves in that art of instincts was much wider than for this more rational current.

WHW Ϙ If we return to the past, what do you

think, when did the local perception of Exat change, and when did Exat begin to be valorised in a more positive manner? Did that happen in 1979, with your exhibition of Exat in Gallery Nova, which you did with Koščević, or do you think that the climate had changed before that? DENEGRI Ϙ On this occasion, a book was published, a show was held, there was a panel on Exat. The participants were, for instance, Milan Prelog, Josip Depolo, people who were witnesses of the age. Depolo did not have any sympathies for Exat, but even he had to say that history cannot be made on the basis of dilettantism. After this there was no doubt that Exat was a worthy phenomenon, although there was already an impression that this was something important. At that time, some other art was on the scene. In my text, I compared them to groups like Forma Uno and Movimento d’arte concreta in Italy, because I knew them from other sources which were not known locally. Other milieus repeat this great European story. For instance, Italy is very interesting because it underwent an epoch of restoration after fascism, democracy was coming, the Communist Party was strong, there was a Democratic-Christian current, autonomous

So in Paris you also had absolute domination of lyric abstraction. Those authors were highly acclaimed: Alfred Manessier, Jean René Bazaine,

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intellectuals, Croce’s aesthetic tradition, and in this constellation currents that were close to Exat in their language and ideology occurred. Because I knew this matter, Exat was revealed to me in a new light. In Italy, everything was in conflict between the idealistic tradition of Croceanism and Communist utopianism, which was brought there by Gramsci, and not by orthodox Marxism. In the manifesto of the Forma Uno group, they claimed they were Marxists and formalists, and this was even impossible to conceive in some other context. In this light, even Exat is now seen in a different way. If we consider Exat as a current in painting, and only in painting, with two or three authors, then it is a weak current, in the context where there were really talented painters, like Ordan Petlevski, Ljubo Ivančić and others, and Exat was constantly reproached from this position, they were accused of doing geometry forty years too late, etc. This confusion originated because the international situation wasn’t well known, and not the situation that was described in every textbook of visual arts, but the specific history of local European milieus. We must not think we know post-war art if we know only Pollock or Dubuffet, and here we had such views. However, all these milieus are infinitely deeper, the Salon de Réalités Nouvelles, post-war Paris, post-war Italy, and these comparisons are very favourable for Exat. True, it was a little late, maybe by a few years, but the model was very similar. Some people here took the position of Charles Harrison, who was here on the panel, and who saw things from an Anglo-American context, and who considered geometry as something wiped out by the Pollock generation, and he wondered why some academic geometry was considered as being avantgarde here. In a similar way, many people saw Exat painting as outdated geometry, but for me it is only a sign repertoire for the total Exat ideology, which also consisted of architecture and urban planning, an idea of synthesis, education and theory of art, and paintings are only a matrix for this. WHW Ϙ When we talk about the status of

DENEGRI Ϙ Having in mind all of Exat’s

Zagreb, June 2007


Tendencije 4, exhibition poster, Galery of Contemporary Art, Arts & Crafts Museum, SC Gallery, Zagreb 1969 Design Ivan Picelj

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Exat as being avant-garde or about negating its avant-garde position, how do you see the fact that Exat is a group, an art collective? How do you see this single collectivist formation and its political-aesthetical public proclamations in view of these classifications?

activities, and if we consider the fact that some of them were painters, others were architects or designers, and still others were into education and design, Exat was not a group in the sense that all of them subscribed to one and the same. Rather, it was a group of ideologically similarly minded people. On the other hand, the time was such as to require collective proclamations; it was easier to fight for your ideas if you had your generational and ideological interlocutors in an intolerant climate. Therefore it gave strength to an idea that had an intention of revolutionary relations. How could an individual cope with that? The other question is to what extent an individual was integrated, and to what extent they were independent. For me, the independent intention of these people is enough. My starting point is that the time was post-war, after all that everything was destroyed materially, spiritually and in every possible way. Young people strived for the progress of their surroundings and their own lives, and an atmosphere of optimism still reigned there, if I am allowed to say this in a banal way. From this perspective, it doesn’t seem to me that this was an official ideology if you thought you needed to build the society in which you lived. Some ten years later, from another position, some doubt arose if this way was good, if we were living in a society that we had wished for, but in the years of Exat, I think this doubt still wasn’t present. As far as I know, these artists earned their living working in other areas. Picelj never had his atelier, the same is true for Srnec, and Rašica was an architect. This matrix showed who was integrated, and who was not. Ateliers were handed out and teaching positions were given to those considered suitable. Not one of them was a teaching assistant at the Academy, or a professor. They worked or earned their living doing graphic design. I may be wrong in some details, but for me this is evidence that they achieved their material existence not by becoming members of the visual artists’ union, which is an organization from the time of socialist realism, only transformed into a more liberal form. Someone may think that Richter’s status is controversial, because he is older than the others, but I always remember his statement that socialism is not about power, but about interpersonal relations. It was daring to say something like this in the age of Communism, even coming from a person who belonged to the elite. This idea of a civilised welfare society, I won’t say socialism, but some welfare society, did not survive, but it is still a model, in a final analysis, as a political idea. For me, this is the idea of Exat, not the geometric abstraction that was then overturned by lyric abstraction, and this was then overturned by New Tendencies [Nove tendencije], and then by new figuration, and from then we go backwards. This is then made into a battle of languages that have something to do with the system of galleries and the art system that promotes this or that artist and not some other… In post-Communism, one loses one’s orientation in all this. People revalorize the worst ideologies or reject what was positive in the old regime because of its global demise. It seems to me that Exat was a call for a civilized living in the early, post-war socialism, and I cannot see what was bad in this. ”

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Ivan Picelj exhibition “Ombre, nombre” at Galerie Denise René, Paris 1982 [Rene Bleibtuen, Denise René, Ivan Picelj, Luciene Kilian]

WHW in conversation with IVAN PICELJ


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art is not a one-way activity WHW Ϙ When did you first go to Paris? PICELJ Ϙ In October, 1955. France, and the whole of Europe as well, was still in ruins. Paris was liberated in 1944, in the summer after the invasion. Other countries were still not functioning at the time, and during the post-war period, Paris had the advantage of being the first European capital that was liberated. Intellectuals from the country and from exile had been returning during these years... in 1945, people returned from the camps... WHW Ϙ What was the image of Paris in our

country? Did Paris exist as some mythical place since the pre-war times? PICELJ Ϙ All the generations had passed through Paris. All of them. When we were still very young, after 1945, and when we talked to the middle-aged generation – and they seemed terribly old to us, and they were, and mostly remained, figurative artists – we used to ask them: “Well, what did you look at in Paris in ’36 – ’37?” WHW Ϙ They were probably in the Louvre the

whole time... PICELJ Ϙ No, the point was, art was not a one-way activity, especially in Paris at that time. In Paris, like in all big cities, all styles intersected, and there was no single dominant art form. WHW Ϙ How did you travel to Paris that first

time? Did you have some special reason to go? PICELJ Ϙ I went simply to see Paris, invited by a friend. I travelled by the Orient Express, which went from Istanbul and Athens, and arrived in Paris at Gare de Lyon. The journey lasted 26 hours, and the train was cosmopolitan – from Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, everything poured into Gare de Lyon. It was a very vivid and electrified train – it started from Zagreb at half past five AM, and arrived into Gare de Lyon the following day at 9, 9:30 AM, if it was arriving on time. WHW: Was there a sleeping car at least? PICELJ Ϙ No, what sleeping car – we didn’t have the money for that.

Prés which was the center or art world at that time. I knew some things from the stories of Ivo Steiner, who was a citizen of Paris until the war, and who talked a lot about Paris. He had lived abroad from ’28, first in Berlin, until ’33, so he knew the Berlin avant-garde... After Hitler came to power, he left for France. He was affiliated with many artists, until he left Paris and went to the Partisans. After Hitler’s invasion of France, he escaped to the south of France, then to Spain, then from Spain to northern Africa, from northern Africa to the liberated part of Italy after the invasion, and finally, from Bari to the Partisans, with Odette, his French wife. After the war, he stayed in Zagreb. WHW Ϙ You sent your works to the Salon des

Réalités Nouvelles, where you exhibited in 1952, just like that? How did you learn about this manifestation? PICELJ Ϙ We learned about the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles through the magazine Art d’aujourd’hui and French Institute in Zagreb, which played a huge role in the cultural scene. It was the second French Institute that was opened in the world after WWI, and had a great tradition. Their library was sensational; today, it is totally dispersed – I don’t know why... From the magazines I knew what was going on in Paris, there was a spiritual contact. At one time, you could subscribe to the magazine Art d’aujourd’hui through the French institute, and you could also order books through them. They had found some loop in the law, so you could do this. WHW Ϙ And what was the procedure for sending works to Paris in 1952? PICELJ Ϙ Simple, like it is today, it wasn’t any different. It was just a question of customs. A custom official came and said, “It is awkward to send all these works”. I told him, well, nine paintings. “It would be simpler that I come to you, and you also have the boxes.” Well, everything’s ready, I told him. “Prepare everything, boxes and all, and I will look at it and pack it.” So, he just came and asked “Where are the paintings?” WHW Ϙ It sounds easier than today! In the

WHW: How long did you stay in Paris? Did you

have any contacts in advance, did you know whom to contact?


PICELJ Ϙ When you have a bureaucratic system, then...

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PICELJ Ϙ I was there until Christmas, almost two months. When I arrived, the day was grey: October, rain, you leave Gare de Lyon... and then I thought – so, finally in Paris... I didn’t have any contacts, I knew only André Bloc from magazine AA. I first lived with a friend Charles Rosoff and later in hotel Richardet, close to St. Germain des

book “The Art of Constructive Approach – EXAT 51 and New Tendencies”, Jerko Denegri says that your participation in the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in 1952 was the first postwar unofficial presentation of Croatian artists abroad. One would not expect that a process that is so complicated went so smoothly...

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Didactic exhibition: Abstract art, poster, Galery of Contemporary Art, Zagreb 1957

Group 58, installation view, Antwerp, 1958

Art Yougoslave d’aujourd’hui, exhibition poster, Galerie Creuze, Paris 1959

30 WHW Ϙ ...there are loops. PICELJ Ϙ Yes. We sent our paintings; it wasn’t a national treasure, nothing like that, just some paintings from ’51 and ’52, which didn’t mean anything to anybody. WHW Ϙ Was it difficult to get a passport those

days? PICELJ Ϙ Yes, it was a problem. Namely, we were lucky to have our passports when we did pavilions and World Exhibitions. We were in Austria and Sweden for the first time in 1949 – then it was very complicated, lots of talks, lots of forms... So I had my passport, but this didn’t mean anything, you needed an exit visa. The entrance visa was a lesser problem, but you needed to have the exit visa, and since I had been abroad already, several times, it was probably simpler for me to get the visa. They knew us already, we returned every time. People usually left, and that was it – they never came back. WHW Ϙ Did you meet Denise René during

your first stay in Paris in 1955, with whose gallery you later cooperated in various ways?


PICELJ Ϙ I was lucky to meet all my future friends during my first visit in 1955. After the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, I continued my correspondence with them, for example, with André Bloc. I sent my photos to him, and he published two of them. This correspondence is partly stored in the Georges Pompidou Centre. It was shown to me by a director whom I knew while they were still building the Boubourg, I don’t know exactly what year it was. We had met in the Museum of Contemporary Art, and he said to me: “Now I’ll show something to you”, and he showed me this correspondence. It’s all sorted today, all the papers. France is a country with a memory, and it nourishes it, so they collect everything, from tram tickets, metro tickets, to high art – everything is stored. And they showed me my letters to André Bloc, and I said: “You are indiscrete, who gave you the right to own my letters.” Unfortunately, those were not the letters to a beautiful girl; those were letters to André Bloc. But, maybe the other ones also exist somewhere. They store everything, and the reproductions which I had sent from our exhibition were also in their archive.

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Art abstrait constructif international, poster, Galerie Denise René, Paris 1961

Arp, exhibition poster, Galerie Denise René, Paris 1959

Bakić, Picelj, Srnec – sculptures, paintings, reliefs, poster, Drian Galleries, London 1961

31 great prestige. I’m sorry that I came to Paris too late, in October, because in the summer there was the first exhibition of kinetic art, with a manifesto. It was called Le Mouvement. Tinguely, Soto, Duchamp, Agam ... exhibited there. Everyone was there, and they were young. Still, I met many of them. So it happens in life, a coincidence, and then you have friends. I met a lot of protagonist of avantgarde movement who participated in activities of Denise René Gallery. WHW Ϙ At that time, in 1955, did you have the first talks about the exhibition in the Denise René Gallery? How did that happen at all? PICELJ Ϙ No, in ’55 we only talked and associated a lot. All of them were leftists and friends of Yugoslavia, not Stalinists, but opposed to them, so we were a bright example for them. WHW Ϙ Seuphor wrote a beautiful text in the

preface of the exhibition catalogue, that you are “cell batteries which never get empty”.

WHW Ϙ When you came to Paris in 1955, what

was the status of the Denise René Gallery? PICELJ Ϙ The Denise René Gallery opened immediately after the liberation, with the Vasarely exhibition. During the first two years, it hosted various artists, and after that, it took a completely defined direction in art. The gallery was the gathering point of Parisian intellectuals, for example, after his return from New York, Breton had visited it often... Denise René organised the first exhibition of Toyen, a Czech artist, a famous surrealist, persuaded by Breton himself; she also organized the exhibition of Max Ernst when he came back from America. It was all avant-garde, but avant-garde was always under political influences. For example, Denise René told us that only Breton came to the opening of Toyen’s exhibition. The surrealists separated in ’34, after the Moscow trials, because Breton reacted to the Moscow trials, and he separated for good from some of the surrealists. When I came to Paris, the gallery had been in existence already for ten or eleven years, and it had


PICELJ Ϙ Denise René, as well as the whole group around her, knew the situation in Yugoslavia. When New Belgrade was built, after the war, around the Parliament and Central Committee buildings, her brother was in the International Youth Brigades. He is a doctor. He gathered the French Youth Brigade, after 1950. A common friend of ours, who was a diplomat in Paris, told me once how they had a meeting in Belgrade related to foreign affairs and youth brigades, and they asked: “What to do with the French, they are all Trotskyites?”, and someone said: “Let them be, you see that they are quiet.” The atmosphere in the gallery was politicized, the constructivist orientation in art was always like that, it cannot exist without politics, it was not l’art pour l’art, we fought against it, not in the socialistrealist sense, but from other positions. In the gallery, I met people who shared common artistic interests. WHW Ϙ How did it come to be that in 1959, Srnec, Bakić, and you had an exhibition. Was it your choice, or was it the choice of the Parisians? PICELJ Ϙ I informed them, brought them catalogues, showed them the works, sent them photos of our exhibition of ’51. Then we had an exhibition at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. As time went by, people gave up. Kristl definitively went away, no one else worked, Rašica was more into architecture than into paintings. In one moment, architecture tipped the scale in him. When we were founding our group, he had just been out of jail, and he painted because he didn’t

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Donner à voir, exhibition poster, Galerie Creuze, Paris 1962 Arp, exhibition poster, Galerie Denise René, Paris 1962

have a place, didn’t have an office. Rehabilitation was not so simple, or so quick... WHW Ϙ You showed your works to them and

agreed you’d exhibit your works, as well as the works of Srnec and Bakić ? PICELJ Ϙ That’s right. And since Bakić had already been at the Biennale and had great works, everyone saw it, he already had a reputation. They called him “Bakik”. All three of us went there for the opening, it was ’59 already, and a new age was dawning, towards the sixties. We had sent the works earlier. It was a large exhibition; every one of us had 15 or 16 works. At the end of ’53, a rule was introduced that the Conservation office issues export licences. We didn’t have any help from any institution, we organized and financed everything by ourselves. WHW Ϙ What did the atmosphere of the exhibition look like?

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PICELJ Ϙ It was wonderful. In 1957, Denise René started to exhibit the artists who were not from Paris. She organized the first exhibition of Mondrian in ’57. He had lived in Paris from 1924 till 1939, and yet that was his first exhibition, posthumous. It was organized and made by Denise René with the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. I became a friend of Denise René when I was in Paris, and I was there often, I made a design for her gallery. I’m especially fond of the first work I made for her, a poster which I made in 1959 with Arp. He had an atelier outside of Paris, and I often visited him. In his neighbourhood there was a house of Van Doesburg ... The same year we made the exhibition in Paris, 1957, we made a diversion in Zagreb, with the help of Božo Bek, who then worked in the Graphics Cabinet. We learned that there was an original Mondrian in Belgrade’s National Museum. We checked this information through our acquaintances, and really, the painting was in the basement, in the depots. How did Mondrian get to Belgrade? When the Dutch royal family came to visit the Karađorđević family – Prince Paul was known for his collections – they brought him a Mondrian painting from ’32, and a drawing of Van Gogh, as a gift.


WHW Ϙ A royal gift, indeed ! PICELJ Ϙ The Van Gogh was exhibited, and the Mondrian was never shown. And now Gallery for Contemporary Art, with the help of Božo Beck, decides to borrow the Mondrian and to print a serigraph. And we received the Mondrian in a box, packed in oil paper, sent through the post office.

The post office! We were appalled. It was hanging here, on this wall, for two months. And then we printed a serigraph with a text by Vera Horvat Pintarić and translation of the text by Sandberg, which was published in Paris at Denise René’s. This work was created in such a way. We showed it at the Gallery for Contemporary Art, as a part of didactical exhibition “Abstract Art”. WHW Ϙ Did your exhibition at Denise René’s

have any reception at home ? PICELJ Ϙ Not much. Denise René started to present European constructivist abstraction with Mondrian, she exhibited Hungarian avant-garde, then the German and the Polish, and then we were exhibited as its Yugoslavian representatives. It was the third or fourth exhibition in a row, there was one every year. Our opening was really great; the whole circle came there. There was the Polish culture representative, who asked me where his Yugoslavian colleague was. I told him: “I suppose he will be here.” “It seems he won’t”, he said. “He will”, I said. However, he didn’t show up. WHW Ϙ Contrary to the reactions at home, the

reaction in Paris was excellent? PICELJ Ϙ Unexpected; even they were in wonder. Such interest surprised us, too. The exhibition in Paris had an immediate effect; people came from London and asked for the exhibition. So, the three of us had two exhibitions in London in ’60 and ’61, in Drian Gallery. In London, the ambassador was Ivo Vejvoda, and he was a man of culture. At the opening, there were Henry Moore, Lynn Chadwick, Erno Goldfinger – a great architect. Later, there was the celebration at the ambassador’s, some of these people were there. The gallery was a narrow building at Marble Arch, in the centre of London. It was managed by a rich Polish woman, an immigrant. WHW Ϙ Did the political aspect of Yugoslavia

have the same importance at the London exhibitions as was the case with the Denise René Gallery? PICELJ Ϙ Not as much. Not at all. England is a completely different country. Wonderful people. For example, I spent a long time at Chadwick’s, a whole month as a guest. WHW Ϙ For the Parisian exhibition, the

preface was written by Seuphor and Vasarely. How did that happen? PICELJ Ϙ I met them in 1955. I was then in Paris for two months, and I met a lot of people, for example Le Corbusier, with whom I stayed, and

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Nove tendencije 2, exhibition poster, Galery of Contemporary Art, Zagreb 1963

V. Richter, exhibition poster, Arts and Crafts Museum, Zagreb 1964 Vojin Bakić, exhibition poster, Galery of Contemporary Art, Zagreb 1964 all posters designed by Ivan Picelj

WHW Ϙ Did Denise René ever come to

Zagreb? PICELJ Ϙ She came for the first time to the opening of Soto’s exhibition, and she came several times again, since she went to the Graphic Biennale in Ljubljana. WHW Ϙ How did the official representation of

Yugoslav art look in the fifties? PICELJ Ϙ We started to participate in this at the end of the 1950s. For example, the exhibition in Antwerpen in 1958, during the World exhibition in Brussels, came to pass because Većeslav Holjevac, the mayor of Zagreb, went to wisit the mayor of Antwerpen, and they wanted to exhibit Zagreb’s avant-garde art. The organizer was the Gallery of Contemporary Art, there were reporters from Zagreb as guests at the opening evening. We were introduced as Group ’58, there were Murtić, Kinert, Prica, Reiser, Angeli Radovani, Džamonja, Bakić, Gliha and me. It was a large exhibition, at the Royal Academy. WHW Ϙ Simultaneously with the exhibitions

at these respected galleries abroad, you also worked on the popularization of such a practice at home – at the time, you worked on a very interesting didactical exhibition, which presented abstract art to the public. What was this exhibition like?


Zagreb, March 2007

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also Leger. In 1957, Seuphor made the exhibition Fifty Years of Abstract Art; he included me in this exhibition and showed me the photos from 1956. We kept in contact those years, and I invited him to write the preface for the catalogue. He also worked on the Dictionary of Abstract Painting, in which he also included me – it was the first mention of EXAT 51 in some Western country. Only a few people at home knew of Seuphor. From him, I received the book Abstract Art, which was translated and published by the publishing house “Mladost”. It was translated by Putar, and Šolc was the editor. All such projects were based on friendship. Seuphor came to Zagreb in 1960 for a few days to introduce the book. He gave a lecture at the Museum of Arts and Crafts, at Zdenka Munk’s. She was a scholarship recipient in Paris in 1938, and knew a circle of people, mostly related to the surrealists. There was some interest for this in Zagreb, there were a lot of people at the lecture, and the newspapers mentioned his visit, but it all remained within a narrow circle.

PICELJ Ϙ It was an enormously important exhibition, we worked on it for a year, and it was open in 1957. It consisted only of the reproductions, on the photo-murals. I destroyed some valuable journals from which I cut out the reproductions so they could see them in colour. Every mural had its original text. I made the selection. There are photos of the selection by Nenad Gattin. The exhibition started to travel in 1959. I think it started with Novi Sad or Subotica, I don’t remember, and it travelled the whole of Yugoslavia, all the way to Skopje, through various museums... If you had only seen the attendance at these exhibitions! They even started to bring school children there! ”

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“Freeze Images” collage, 2007, 62,2 × 50,8 cm Courtesy Metro Pictures, New York

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35 ... The appearance of EXAT is most often identified with the Group and its programme based on positions of abstract art at a time when such a position meant not only an attitude of resistance to the momentarily dominant ideology situation in the sphere of culture but an aspiration to promoting an understanding of art new to the milieu in which the Group operated. This aspect of the appearance of EXAT, however, takes into consideration only one orientation of the work of the Group, whose points of departure had a much broader platform and a much more farreaching effect: in fact, today it is obvious that this relaying of many individual energies stemming from different spheres of activity involved an effort aimed at a more comprehensive tackling task imposed by the requirements of a concrete historical reality, in the years immediately following World War II, requirements which brought up, as the “topic of the day”, the question of ideationa planning and putting into practice the integration of specific components of spiritual and material culture within the context of the vaster process of reconstructing certain fundamental premises involving the community and life in general, necessary at that time. Jerko Dengri, in Denegri / Koščević, “EXAT 51, 1951-56”, Galerija Nova, Centar za kulturnu djelatnost saveza socijalističke omladine Zagreba, Zagreb, 1979


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The position of EXAT in this complex of events was specific that the Group, unlike the other contributions which would more or less follow the already inveterate concept of art in one’s own environment, represented a perceptible and deliberate break with many premises of this deep-rooted concept of art. This break, however, is not to be sought only in the fact that EXAT painters advocated the position of pure abstract art as having no close and immediate antecedents in the national milieu, but primarily in the fact that the entire rage of design assignements – as understood by the work programme of the Group – assumes fundamental changes and essential extensions of social points of departure and repercussions in the very approach to the concept of art, and this then necessary implies a need to change the professional profile of the artists [or, more exactly, as Radić had already put it,

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“plastician”], his training, his awareness and


his behaviour. Jerko Denegri, in Denegri / Koščević, “EXAT 51, 1951-56”, Galerija Nova, Centar za kulturnu djelatnost saveza socijalističke omladine Zagreba, Zagreb, 1979

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37 On the set of “Images With Their Own Shadows” 2008, photo Maja Kadoić Courtesy artist


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The question of socialism, as a radical social change aimed at dissolving class society, appears indeed as a historical question which, essentially, cannot be related to individual personalities, a question which does not disappear with disappearance of individual or parties, and which is not even affected by the distorted practices of some countries or the preventive measures taken by certain capitalist

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countries. For us this is important as part of general


change in our image of the world, society included, which can be grasped precisely through our increased knowledge in all areas of human activity. Vjenceslav Richter, “Sinturbanizam”, Mladost, Zagreb, 1964

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The paradox of the whole situation – from the presentday viewpoint – seems to lie in the fact that the aspiration of EXAT, whose manifesto pointed out that “the activity of the Group takes place here and now, taking for its point of departure requirements and possibilities in the plastic art”, were at the time contested on the grounds of the alleged orthodoxy of the socialist cause, and almost twenty years had to pass before the markedly local – traditionalist roots of the mentalities which, from that moment on, represented the chief opponents of EXAT’s ideological and artistic commitment, could be clearly seen. Jerko Denegi, in Denegri / Koščević, “EXAT 51, 1951-56”, Galerija Nova, Centar za kulturnu djelanost saveza socijalističke omladine Zagreba, Zagreb, 1979

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Lost Pavilion, [American Pavilion at Zagreb Fair by John Johansen, 1956], collage, 2008.


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Gallery Nova • Zagreb in collaboration with Metro Pictures • New York Galerija Nova newspapers no. 17 on the occassion of the exhibition David Maljković “Retired Compositions” January 17 – February 21, 2009 Metro Pictures 519 West 24th Street • New York • NY 10011 • USA [email protected]

publishers: What, How and for Whom / WHW Slovenska 5/1 • HR-10000 Zagreb [email protected]

AGM Mihanovićeva 28 • Zagreb [email protected]

editors: What, How and for Whom/WHW – Ivet Ćurlin, Ana Dević, Nataša Ilić, Sabina Sabolović in collaboration with David Maljković translation Goran Vujasinović proof-reading Susan Jakopec photos courtesy of David Maljković • Ivan Picelj • Metro Pictures, New York • Annete Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam • WHW • Arkzin design: Dejan Kršić typography: H&FJ Verlag • H&FJ Mercury • LeCorbusier Stencil paper: Munken Print Cream 80 & 115 g/m2 [Arctic • Igepa Plana Papers] printing by GIPA • Zagreb print run: 1000 December 2008 • Zagreb this issue of Gallery Nova newspapers is made possible by: City office for culture, education and sport of City of Zagreb Metro Pictures • New York Ministry of Culture of Republic of Croatia WHW’s research on the exhibition Bakić, Picelj, Srnec held in Gallery Denise René in Paris in 1959, was part of the project Société Anonyme, March 14 – May 13, 2007 in Le Plateau, Paris curated by Thomas Boutoux, Natasa Petrešin and François Piron

David Maljković [b. 1973 in Rijeka, Croatia] currently lives and works in Zagreb. Solo exhibitions in 2007/08 include P.S. 1, New York; The Whitechapel Gallery, London; Kunstverein, Hamburg; CAPC, Bordeaux; and Kunstverein Nürnberg. Recent group exhibitions include “Eyes Wide Open,” Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; “The Violet Hour,” Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; and the 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art. What, How & for Whom/WHW is a curatorial collective that organizes different production, exhibition and publishing projects, and directs Gallery Nova in Zagreb, Croatia. WHW is currently curating 11th Istanbul Biennial [September 12 – November 8, 2009] under the title What Keeps Mankind Alive?.


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Socialism as the issue of the day should not be understood as an exclusively practical matter, based on the power of progressive parties and the practical possibility of taking over control, but as an issue of

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involving the order of the world, historically brought to the fore by the development of the forces of production.

Vjenceslav Richter, “Sinturbanizam”, Mladost, Zagreb, 1964

Retired images - David Maljković - Gallery Nova Newspapers no.17

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