Those were the early 1960’s, a short period of economic prosperity in Yugoslavia and, even more, a time of a great spiritual enthusiasm, when the Zagreb-based Gallery of Contemporary Art staged a series of exhibitions of the international art movement, New Tendencies.

One of the most peculiar phenomena in the history of Croatian and Yugoslav art has entered the historiy books  under the name of Gorgona (‘Gorgon’), this being the name in Greek mythology for a monster, whose eyes, supposedly, had the power to turn to stone anyone who dared look into her face. 

It was the novel ways of comprehending the structure and the meaning of a work of art, based on mental and post-aesthetic attributes, as well as the emergence of a broader social and spiritual atmosphere, that had conditioned the newest developments and opened up the way to a better understanding of a whole range of artistic processes. In Zagreb, the phenomena to which this general comment refers include some examples of Radical Art informel that appeared between 1956 and 1962 and all the activities of the group named Gorgona (‘Gorgon’), which was active between 1959 and 1966.

The Concept of a ‘Yugoslav Art Space’

The concept of a ‘Yugoslav art space’ denotes the geographic area and political environment in which the polycentric and decentralised, yet at the same time unified, and shared, art life of the ‘Second Yugoslavia’ (1945-1991) was maintained. It was polycentric and decentralised, because it consisted of several cultural milieux and their capitals, i.e. the republics of the former country which have meanwhile become independent states; unified and shared in common, for it was interlinked by numerous personal and institutional ties between the many active participants in Yugoslavia’s art scene of the time.