VIDEOART IN CROATIA

History of Videoart in Croatia

There was an early development of video art in Croatia — it happened within the first ten years of the existence of video art in the world. Several Croatian artists have quickly appropriated the medium, and have become members of the world video-art scene. Namely, at the end of the sixties and the beginning of the seventies there was an art movement towards the use of new media, towards the multimedia approach, and conceptualist actions and performances in Croatia. Boris Bućan, Braco Dimitrijević, Sanja Iveković, Dalibor Martinis, Goran Trbuljak and some others — all of them part of the »new art practice« avant-garde scene — made use of video as early as at the very beginning of the seventies. There were two basic directions of the use of video medium. One was a real-time documentary approach to the personal process art actions (performances, happenings, actions), like the video record of the performances by Braco Dimitrijević in London (Metabolism as a Body Sculpture and The Thought Process as a Body Sculpture, St. Martins School of Arts, 1971), or the record of the action Lie by Boris Bućan shot on video (Trigon, Graz, 1973).

Another, more prominent and important direction was that of meta-media research, or so-called analytic video, the most prominent authors being Goran Trbuljak, Sanja Iveković and Dalibor Martinis. Video was introduced to Croatian artists mostly through foreign workshops, through their participation at video exhibitions abroad, and foreign equipment tours through Croatia. Two events were decisive. The first was the participation of Sanja Iveković, Dalibor Martinis, Goran Trbuljak and Boris Bućan at the Trigon ’73 in Graz (Audiovisuelle Botschaften) led by prominent art historian Vera Horvat-Pintarić, where each of the artists shot several video works. The second was the workshop in the small Croatian town of Motovun in Istria, organized by the Galleria dell Cavallino, Venice (they brought video equipment) and Town Galleries from Zagreb. Iveković, Martinis and Trbuljak did a number of important video works there. There were some other workshops organized in Croatia with some other artists participating (e.g. M. Stilinović, B. Demur), but out of these first trials the two artists became predominantly involved with video art: Sanja Iveković and Dalibor Martinis.

For a long time they constituted a kernel of Croatian video art, participating since then at numerous international exhibitions, festival screenings, and workshops, praised and awarded. The insight into the world video-art scene was granted by the Croatian tours of individuals, art-groups and galleries showing their personal work or their collections (e.g. Art Tapes 22 from Florence, Studio 970 from Varese, Galleria Del Cavallino from Venice, or later Video Heads from Amsterdam etc.). In 1976 a Multi-Media Center was established in Student Center in Zagreb.

With its basic VHS equipment it enabled artists, for example Martinis and Iveković, to make their first home video installations/performances and to present their tapes (1978). The MM Center was also crucial for bringing in numerous programs of international video-works and avant-garde cinema and for enabling the art-scene to become conscious of the importance of early film avant-garde tradition in Croatia and abroad. The curator of the MM Centar Ivan Ladislav Galeta also made some important video-works at that time at the end of the seventies. Martinis and Iveković went to Canada in 1978 and 1979. This was the beginning of their international career (e.g. they had exhibitions-presentations of their work in the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in the Hara Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam etc.).

In the eighties production opportunities were still almost nonexistent in Croatia, but Croatian artists used the possibilities opened at the Belgrade TV (by the curator Dunja Blažević), Skopje TV and made some works there. Two important new authors emerged in the mid-eighties: Breda Beban and Hrvoje Horvatić. They joined Martinis and Iveković as primarily video art and video-installation oriented authors. Some others did some work in video domain at the end of the seventies and in the eighties, too. Besides meta-media oriented important video, film and art-object work by I. L. Galeta, there were also Ivan Faktor, Tomislav Gotovac (a renowned film avant-garde author) and Željko Kipke that made some tapes at the time. At the end of the eighties and during the nineties, a new generation of video artists emerged: Milan Bukovac, Ivo Deković, Sandro Đ ukić, Darko Fritz, Ivan Marušić (Klif), Simon B. Narath, Igor Kuduz, Andreja Kulunčić, Rino Efendić, Davor Mezak, Armando Jeričević, Vlado Knežević, Vlado Zrnić and others. Some of them predominantly work abroad (Ivo Deković, Darko Fritz, Dan Oki, Sanda Sterle, Wladimir Frelih).

Others use now widespread and accessible video equipment in Croatia, doing their work either in their local cine (video) clubs, in Croatian Film Club’s Association (Hrvatski filmski savez, Zagreb), or using their own equipment, or some private studio equipment facilities. Video-art works are presented in Croatia at the Zagreb Salon, the Salon of Young Artists (Salon mladih) in Zagreb, at film and video festivals in Zagreb, Split and Požega. They are exhibited in art galleries, art museums, and cultural centers such as the MM Centar in Zagreb. The Museum of Modern Art in Zagreb and the Croatian Film Club’s Association maintain the collections of video works. At the Art Academy in Split (Umjetnička akademija u Splitu) and the Art Academy in Zagreb (Akademija likovnih umjetnosti, Zagreb) video art has been included in art education recently (since 1997) and some renowned video artists teach there (I. L. Galeta, V. Zrnić, G. Trbuljak, S. Iveković...).

Marijan Susovski