engleski

Female Presence in the Field of Memorial Sculpture and Architecture 1968-1989 in Socialist Croatia

Considering the active role and emancipation of women during and following the WWII in Yugoslavia, their inclusion in the public sphere of the self-managed socialist society, and their enhanced role in shaping cultural life of the post-war period, the percentage of women participating in the production of WWII monuments (i.e. Peoples’ Liberation Struggle, Socialist Revolution and Workers’ Movement) was exceptionally low. Both memory politics and memory work done through the erection of monuments was in hands of predominantly male organisations and individuals. Our data analysis done on ca. 1750 monuments on the territory of the Federal Republic of Croatia (1945-1990) show that less than 4% of sculptors and around 10% of architects were women. What is more, female participation was less “visible” due to the long tradition of gender bias in the field of monumental sculpture, and the constrains of achieving chief positions in major architectural projects. The first generation of female sculptors, active in this filed in the 1950s, largely withdrew in later years to small sculpture or applied arts. The stereotype of physical incapability of women to work in big formats was in this specific field of production doubled with the presumption of their inclination towards the private sphere and intimate topics. At the same time, although women were proportionally more active as architects in the field of memorial architecture, it was mainly due to their frequent participation as landscape architects, a role which was perceived as “secondary”. However, both in the filed sculpture and architecture, late sixties and the seventies have brought about several important yet still unrecognised memorial projects done by women. The aim of this paper is not only to analyse their formal features, but to put them in the specific context of the production and social use of WWII monuments in the socialist Croatia.

WWII monuments, memorial sculpture, memorial architecture, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, landscape architecture.

nije evidentirano