Margit Rosen, et al. (eds.): A Little-Known Story About a Movement, a Magazine, and The Computer’s Arrival in Art: New Tendencies and Bit International, 1961-1973 (2011)

“When Zagreb was the epicenter of explorations into the aesthetic potential of the new “thinking machines.”

This book documents a short but intense artistic experiment that took place in Yugoslavia in the 1960s and 1970s but has been influential far beyond that time and place: the “little-known story” of the advent of computers in art. It was through the activities of the New Tendencies movement, begun in Zagreb in 1961, and its supporting institution the Galerija suvremene umjetnosti that the “thinking machine” was adopted as an artistic tool and medium. Pursuing the idea of “art as visual research,” the New Tendencies movement proceeded along a path that led from Concrete and Constructivist art, Op art, and Kinetic art to computer-generated graphics, film, and sculpture.

With their exhibitions and conferences and the 1968 launch of the multilingual, groundbreaking magazine Bit International, the New Tendencies transformed Zagreb—already one of the most vibrant artistic centers in Yugoslavia—into an international meeting place where artists, engineers, and scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain gathered around the then-new technology. For a brief moment in time, Zagreb was the epicenter of explorations of the aesthetic, scientific, and political potential of the computer.

This volume documents that exhilarating period. It includes new essays by Jerko Denegri, Darko Fritz, Margit Rosen, and Peter Weibel; many texts that were first published in New Tendencies exhibition catalogs and Bit International magazine; and historic documents. More than 650 black-and-white and color illustrations testify to the astonishing diversity of the exhibited artworks and introduce the movement’s protagonists. Many of the historic photographs, translations, and documents are published here for the first time. Taken together, the images and texts offer the long overdue history of the New Tendencies experiment and its impact on the art of the twentieth century.”

Edited by Margit Rosen in collaboration with Peter Weibel, Darko Fritz, and Marija Gattin
Publisher ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, and MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2011
ISBN 9780262515818, 0262515814
576 pages

Reviews: Brian Reffin Smith (Leonardo, 2012), Joanna Inglot (Slavic Review, 2012), Greg Borman (ARLIS/NA, 2011).

Book website
Exhibition (ZKM, 2008)
Publisher
Publisher
WorldCat

PDF (102 MB)

See also New Tendencies and Bit International on Monoskop wiki.

Sur moderno: recorridos de la abstracción (2019) [Spanish]

“Sur moderno: Journeys of Abstraction explores the abstract and Concrete art movements that flourished in South America from the mid-1940s to the late 1970s. Published in conjunction with a major exhibition, this richly illustrated volume features work by artists from across the region, including Lidy Prati, Tomás Maldonado, Rhod Rothfuss, Lygia Clark, Hélio Oiticica, Jesús Rafael Soto, and Alejandro Otero. Sur moderno highlights a selection of works gifted to MoMA by Patricia Phelps de Cisneros between 1997 and 2016—a donation that has transformed the Museum’s holdings of Latin American art, enabling a more comprehensive representation of the region’s integral role in the development of modern art.”

With contributions by Glenn D. Lowry, Irene V. Small, María Amalia García, Monica Amor and Inés Katzenstein.

Edited by Inés Katzenstein and María Amalia García with Karen Grimson and Michaëla de Lazace
Publisher Museum of Modern Art, New York, Oct 2019
ISBN 9781633450981
224 pages
via El ojo motor

Exh. reviews: Roberta Smith (New York Times, 2019), Edward J. Sullivan (ARTnews, 2019).

Exhibition (EN)
Publisher (ES)
WorldCat

PDF (49 MB, updated on 2023-10-30)

Konkrete Kunst (1944) [German]

Catalogue of the exhibition of 179 works held 18 March-16 April 1944. With texts by Max Bill and Jean Arp. List of the 57 featured artists is printed on the rear cover.

Edited by Max Bill
Publisher Kunsthalle, Basel, 1944
64 pages
via Bibliothèque Kandinsky

Commentary: wiedler.ch.

PDF (18 MB)