Maj 75, A–L (1978-84, 1990) [YU]

“Maj 75 was an artists’ magazine initiated in 1978 by a group of Zagreb-based artists, the Group of Six Artists (Grupa šestorice autora: painter Boris Demur; photographers Željko Jerman, Sven Stilinović, and Fedor Vučemilović; poet Vlado Martek; and filmmaker Mladen Stilinović), or “a group of friends”, as they refer to themselves in the introductory pages of the magazine. The name of the magazine referred to the date of their first public exhibition. It was conceived as “magazine-catalogue” for their self-organized “exhibition-actions” which ranged from performing and creating installations on city streets and squares to taking trips to the seaside, where they created, performed, and documented work. Comprised solely of pages presenting artworks, the magazine can be viewed as an alternative exhibition space, enabling the artists to communicate their work to the public without the mediation and the sanctioning authority of art institutions and curators. Between 1978 and 1984, 17 issues were published (identified by the letters of the Croatian alphabet), with an additional one produced in 1990 and commemoratively titled Ex-Maj. Issue F, edited by Vlasta Delimar, was a women-only issue.” (Source)

“Exhibition venues were fairly limited for artists so the pages of Maj 75 became an alternative space for not only the Group of Six, but also an extended circle of Yugoslavian and other Eastern European artists, to produce and disseminate their work publicly. Artists such as Vlasta Delimar, Tomislav Gotovac, Sanja Iveković, Mangelos, Balint Szombathy, Raša Todosijević and Goran Trbuljak are a few examples of the many contributors during the history of publication. The magazine was printed in the studio of Vlasta Delimar and Željko Jerman.” (Source)

Published in Zagreb, 1978-84, 1990
via Digitizing Ideas

Commentary: Darko Šimičić (2003), Gwen Allen (2011), MoMA.org (2011), Ivana Bago (c2014).

PDFs, JPGs

Les Promesses du passé: une histoire discontinue de l’art dans l’ex-Europe de l’Est (2010) [French]

“Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Les Promesses du passé [Promises of the Past] questions the former opposition between Eastern and Western Europe by reinterpreting the history of the communist block countries. To draw this discontinuous history of art in Former East, this transnational and transgenerational project features works by more than fifty artists from Central and Eastern Europe but also from other European Countries (to name a few: Marina Abramovic, Yael Bartana, Tacita Dean, Liam Gillick, Sanja Ivekovic, Július Koller, Jiri Kovanda, David Maljkovic, Marjetica Potrc and Monika Sosnowska).

Gathering together newly commissioned essays, art documentation, artists’ pages, unpublished documents and an anthology of historical texts by authors such as Slavoj Zizek, the late Igor Zabel and Svetlana Boym, this volume is an invaluable survey of the Eastern European art scene of the last decades—a scene which is gradually shifting from the periphery to the centre of current art-historical debates. ”

Published as catalogue of the exhibition Promises of the Past. A Discontinuous History of Art in Former Eastern Europe held at Centre Pompidou, Paris, 14 April – 19 July 2010, curated by Joanna Mytkowska and Christine Macel.

Edited by Christine Macel and Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez
Publisher Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2010
ISBN 9782844264411, 2844264417
255 pages
via Gioni

Exh. reviews: Mateusz Kapustka (Kunsttexte 2011, DE), Ana Bogdanovic (ArtHist 2013, EN).
Curator’s commentary: Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez (aprior 2011, EN).

Exhibition
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (39 MB)

Stano Filko: II., 1965–69. Tvorba. Works-Creations. Werk-Schaffung. Ouvrages (1970) [SK/EN/DE/FR]

A catalogue documenting the happenings and environmental works of Slovak neo-avant-garde artist Stano Filko from the second half of the 1960s with the author’s handwritten notes.

With an introduction by Pierre Restany
Publisher A-Press, Bratislava, [1970]
[158] pages
via Slovak National Gallery (copy scanned from a private collection)

WorldCat

PDF (39 MB)