engleski

Avangarda bez manifesta: o ekspresionizmu i nadrealizmu u hrvatskoj međuratnoj umjetnosti

Although knowledge of the Avant-garde movements in Croatian intellectual circles of the interwar period was considerably great, Croatian society, as a whole, was primarily oriented towards traditional values in culture and visual arts which, in turn, hindered experimental and revolutionary art practices from taking deeper root, as well as the formation of powerful and influential Avant-garde movements. In the atmosphere of moderate Modernism as the dominant bourgeois ideology of culture and art in Croatia, the Avant-garde tendencies with a radical inclination appeared only occasionally and were short-lived. Although they made significant contributions to the local visual culture of that time, their influence in the interwar period was limited and lacked a wider social affirmation. On the other hand, even the mainstream Croatian interwar art was marked by the reformulations of certain Avant-garde poetics, resulting in an Avant-garde which was simultaneously eclectic and original, and which possessed transnational features incorporated within the national art milieu. Within this context, the work of individuals – who were important figures in the transnational communication of artistic ideas – was essential in transferring conceptual, as well as formal patterns responsible for forging the identity of Croatian modern culture. This presentation will not address the Avant-garde phenomena that adopted, more or less, elaborate strategies of transnational networking (such as, for example, the activities of Ljubomir Micić and the circle of Avant-garde artists gathered around the journal Zenit, or Dragan Aleksić’s exceptional Dadaist activism). It will, however, address the features and the positioning of those artistic phenomena akin to Avant-garde which, without a manifesto or public proclamations, weaved themselves into the fabric of national modern art. Hence, during the First World War and in the first few years following the war, Expressionism in Croatian art emerged as a sum of various influences: ranging from the legacy of Croatian students educated at the Munich Academy in the first decade of the 20th century and sporadic references to the early Austrian Expressionism, to the elaborations of the Prague experiences and influences of the journal Der Sturm. On the other hand, Surrealism in Croatian art emerged in the 1930s – most frequently instigated by residential study visits to Paris – as a product of individual endeavours, without a collective practice. Surrealism is, first and foremost, noticeable within fragments of individual oeuvres, as an addition to diverse individual poetics. Such emergence of Expressionism and Surrealism – as the Avant-gardes without a manifesto – is emblematic of a situation where local surroundings are dislocated from the point of origin of a certain phenomenon. Therefore, hybrid features of a particular artistic expression should not be regarded as a reflection of a cultural or stylistic lag, but as evidence of this phenomenon’s range and impact.

Croatian modern art; Avant-garde; Expressionism; Surrealism

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