engleski

Abstraction as a Tool: Main Attributes of Croatian Art and Architecture in the 1950s and 1960s

The presentation addresses some of the major concepts and ideas that marked the cultural, architectural and art world in post WW2 Croatia, as part of the Yugoslav federation. This is done particularly in view of the relationship between East and West, and that between art and ideology. The phenomenon that so deeply marked the 1950s, that galvanized the period’s discourse and structured its production, was the concept of abstraction. It was introduced by the group of artists called EXAT 51 – EXAT standing for Experimental Atelier, and 51 for the year in which they published their highly influential Manifesto. The group consisted of painters and architects acting simultaneously as industrial designers and graphic artists. The key points of their artistic and ideological program were: the revolutionary promotion of abstract art and total freedom of artistic expression ; the idea of the synthesis of all fine arts, i.e. the elimination of traditional boundaries between different spheres of art and their integration in a new “total plastic reality”. This “total plastic reality” was in turn meant to properly house and accommodate the new, strong and modern socialist society. The discussion will focus on the pronounced tendency towards pure “questions of form” and rigorous geometrical research, and will examine the choice of abstraction as an aesthetic tool meant to adequately serve the new social ideas and circumstances.

Abstraction; EXAT 51; architectural modernism; socialist society; synthesis of the arts

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