Gorgona

The Gorgona Group (named after the mythological creature of Gorgon), was a Croatian avant-garde art group which consisted of artists and art historians: Dimitrije Bašičević-Mangelos, Miljenko Horvat, Marijan Jevšovar, Julije Knifer, Ivan Kožarić, Matko Meštrović, Radoslav Putar, Đuro Seder, Josip Vaništa (hr), and operated along the lines of anti-art in Zagreb between 1959 and 1966. The Gorgona group engaged in process-directed exercises, games, gatherings, and walks. Beside individual works linked to traditional techniques, the members proposed different concepts and forms of artistic communication, ran a gallery and published from 1961 to 1966 eleven issues of the "anti-magazine" Gorgona. Unlike other art periodicals, it did not offer content such as scholarly essays or reproductions of art; instead, each issue was prepared as an original artwork by a single artist. Josip Vaništa, the group's founder, conceived the first issue, which consisted of the same photograph of an empty shop window reproduced on each of its nine pages; Julije Knifer designed the second issue, with a serpentine black-and-white geometric shape (which he called a "meander") printed on interior pages connected in a continuous loop, instead of bound. British playwright Harold Pinter turned Gorgona no. 8 into a literary issue, and Swiss artist Dieter Roth made original drawings for no. 9. Mangelos's proposal for an immaterial issue remains unrealized. In terms of understanding the role of art in social reality, the members of the group held different, almost opposing views from those of Exat 51 from Zagreb. The Exat members saw art as a tool to change society’s (collective) awareness by offering the high aesthetic criteria required by geometric abstract art. Gorgona’s members, quite to the contrary, were moving away from society and its protocols. They viewed individuality instead of collectivity as the only measure of freedom. Similar to the philosophy of the absurd, Gorgona is a valuable example of post-war escapism which marked certain European and international artists and groups from that period (Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Nouveau Réalisme, Fluxus, Zero). 

With thx to Tihomir Milovac