Zenit

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Zenit 4, May 1921, cover.
Zenit 13, April 1922, cover.
Zenit 17-18, September-October 1922, cover.
Mihailo Petrov, Poster for the first Zenit international exhibition, collage, 1924.

Zenit, International Review of Arts and Culture, enjoyed a reputation as the only Yugoslav avant-garde journal, which was part of the international avant-garde scene at the beginning of the 1920s. Its founder, editor and the chief ideologist of the Zenit programme Ljubomir Micić, poet and art critic, intended to introduce social and artistic principles of avant-garde to Croatia and Serbia, particularly constructivism, futurism and Dada.

The journal was launched in February 1921 and published monthly in Zagreb (1921-23) and Belgrade (1923-26) until December 1926, when it was banned by the authorities. A total of 43 issues were published (including special number dedicated to young Czech artists, and No. 17-18 to the new Russian Art, edited by Ilya Ehrenburg and El Lissitzky), as well as one poster, "Zenitismus", and one issue of the newspaper Zenit dated 23 September 1922.

"Zenitist Manifesto" of June 1921 (published in Zagreb), signed by Micić, Tokin and Gol, proclaimed humanist and anti-war ideals, and called for the creation of a new and united Europe. Other programmatic texts include "Man and the Art", "Zenitosophy, or, the Energy of the Creative Zenitism" (1924), and "The Categorical Imperative of the Zenitist Poet School".

The magazine brought together a number of collaborators including Marijan Mikac, Jo Klek (Josip Seissel), Vilko Gecan, Mihailo Petrov, Boško Tokin, Stanislav Vinaver, Rastko Petrovic, Branko Ve Poljanski (Branko Micić), Dragan Aleksic, Milos Crnjanski, Dusan Matic. Contributors also included Ivan Goll, Alexander Archipenko, Ilya Ehrenburg, Wassily Kandinsky, El Lissitzky, Louis Lozowick, Alexander Blok, Jaroslav Seifert. Visual contributions by Jo Klek and Mihailo Petrov epitomized Zenitist art and painting.

Zenit cooperated with other avant-garde reviews such as De Stijl, L'Esprit nouveau, Der Sturm and MaHer Oberzic. It also involved book publishing; organizing lectures, exhibitions, and soirees; and art collecting. [1]

The last issue (No. 4, December 1926) was banned because of the involvement of Russian artists and M. Rasinov's article "Zenitism Through the Prism of Marxism" [Zenitizam kroz prizmu marksizma].[2]

Issues

In PDF: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17-18, 19-20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26-33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43. All issues in ZIP.

Scans in Digital collection of National Library of Serbia. (Backup at Archive.org).

Scans in World Digital Library.

Reprint

The monograph Zenit 1921-1926 published by Narodna biblioteka Srbije i Prosvjeta Zagreb in 2008 includes studies about literary and visual culture of Zenit, the complete chronicles of the periodical, biographies of all the contributors, a bibliography, a list of literature on Zenit and zenithism, as well as a valuable webography. The book was printed in full color, on 530 pages, and equipped with illustrations from the magazine, as well as with photographs of contemporary celebrities. Some of the photographs appear for the first time.

The same year another reprint was published by Horetzky in Zagreb.

Literature

Film

See also

Links


Avant-garde and modernist magazines

Poesia (1905-09, 1920), Der Sturm (1910-32), Blast (1914-15), The Egoist (1914-19), The Little Review (1914-29), 291 (1915-16), MA (1916-25), De Stijl (1917-20, 1921-32), Dada (1917-21), Noi (1917-25), 391 (1917-24), Zenit (1921-26), Broom (1921-24), Veshch/Gegenstand/Objet (1922), Die Form (1922, 1925-35), Contimporanul (1922-32), Secession (1922-24), Klaxon (1922-23), Merz (1923-32), LEF (1923-25), G (1923-26), Irradiador (1923), Sovremennaya architektura (1926-30), Novyi LEF (1927-29), ReD (1927-31), Close Up (1927-33), transition (1927-38).