Collective Work

Collective artistic production runs in various forms throughout the 20th century. Sharing a common cause, artists worked together in firmly structured groups to advance a joint artistic program, and in informal communities to bring their shared worldviews closer together. Collective work in the form of groups with manifestos and common aesthetic programs characteristic of the historical avant-gardes gave way to a variety of looser, less coherent groups of conceptual artists in the late 1960s and 1970s, only to reappear in postmodernism precisely as an imitation, quote or parody of them. It is often within an unfavourable social and/or cultural context-setting, and contrary to the dominant social and artistic values and norms, that artists together seek an alternative space in order to realize their work. It may be a spiritual affinity, a shared worldview or a political position that prompts artists of very different approaches and languages to engage in collective work, while the collective may represent an idea entirely opposite that of a space of diminished individualism. The work and activities the group performs, the ways and modes through which its members interact, and the relationship between the collective and the individual they establish can take on a number of very different forms, ranging from the simple exchange of thoughts to group exhibitions and actions, all the way to the production of a collective artwork. Each group establishes its singular mode of being and working as a collective, some of which you can discover here.

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  Gorgona

  
  

  Adoration, a collective event at Julije Knifer’s exhibition in the Gallery of Contemporary Art in Zagreb in 1966

  b/w photograph

  18 x 24 cm,

  members: painters Josip Vaništa, Marijan Jevšovar, Julije Knifer, Đuro Seder; sculptor Ivan Kožarić; theoreticians and art critics Radoslav Putar, Matko Meštrović, Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos; architect Miljenko Horvat

  photo: Branko Balić

  © MSU

   

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  Group of Six Authors (1975–1984)

  
  

  photo: Exhibition action, Trg republike, Zagreb, 1978

  members: Boris Demur, Željko Jerman, Vlado Martek, Mladen Stilinović, Sven Stilinović, Fedor Vučemilović

  © MSU

• 

  OHO Group (1967 – 1970)

  
  

  OHO group Documentation (1967-1970)

  Photographs, texts, passe-partouts, captions

  56 x (49,8 x 34.8) cm

  © MSU

• 

  IRWIN

  Malevich Between Two Wars/Was ist Kunst / Malevič med obema vojnama/Was ist Kunst, 1984
  

  mixed media / wood

  68.4 x 46.5 x 6 cm

  members: Dušan Mandič, Miran Mohar, Andrej Savski, Roman Uranjek, Borut Vogelnik

  © MSU