Mangelos
Tabula rasa (white), m.5
Artist
Mangelos
(1921, Šid - 1987, Zagreb), Croatian
Original Title
Tabula rasa (white), m.5
Date1951-1956
Mediumtempera on cardboard
Dimensions30,5 × 36 cm
Classificationspaintings
Credit LineKunsthalle Praha
DescriptionMangelos (born Dimitrije Bašičević) was a prominent Croatian neo-avantgarde artist associated with the art group Gorgona. An intellectually driven artist, Mangelos strongly influenced the following generation of Croatian artists and in many ways foreshadowed the tendencies of conceptual art. He developed his own artistic language and rules, ignoring established conventions and incessantly polemizing with general perceptions of art as well as with himself. His unorthodox approach to art, based on constant redefinition, posited him as a truly avantgarde figure illuminating the path toward a new definition of art. His approach to artistic expression can be labelled as anti-art, offering vast opportunities for creative freedom liberated from conventional perceptions of art and stemming from a belief in the necessity to define a new art. This stance was linked to a conviction that art was not sufficiently reflective societal changes stemming from the war and its consequences. During the 1950s, Mangelos created several important series, the conceptual basis of which he would obsessively repeat and develop in following years using varied materials such as wooden boards, paper, books, notebooks, and globes, which his artistic practice appropriated as ready-mades. An important component of his art is text, most often taken from existing printed materials such as maps, books, covers, and exhibition catalogues. Pasted onto various vessels and subsequently covered in layers of paint, they become an integral part of Mangelos’s work. His art always betrays humor and irony, and his arbitrary mixing of languages reflects his aversion toward authoritarian attempts to prioritize certain languages.
Tabula rasa (white), m.5 dates from the first half of the 1950s, when Mangelos was defining his formal artistic vocabulary as well as the content and message of his art. The piece is part of the series Tabula Rasa, which is one of his most important series. It comprises white, black, and red monochrome works intentionally referencing the art of Kazimir Malevič. The crossed out words “tabula rasa” demonstrate Mangelos’s unique approach to anti-art and his intentional experimentation with the boundaries of image and text. The negation of painting as traditionally conceived and understood spotlights the inadequacy of its communicative possibilities in face of the needs of a new era. The piece also thematizes the necessity of forgetting, linked to the search for a new beginning unburdened by previous realities.
Mangelos (1921, Šid – 1987, Zagreb) was an artist, curator, and art critic. He studied art history and philosophy in Vienna and Zagreb, graduating in 1949 and receiving his doctorate in 1957. A prominent curator, he organized many exhibitions in Croatia and abroad and heavily promoted abstract art independent from ideological and academic influences. He helped organize Salon 54 in Rijeka, the first exhibition of abstract art in Yugoslavia. As a curator, he also partook in organizing the New Tendencies exhibitions and actively supported new media (photography, film, television). Alongside his career as a curator and art critic, he also engaged in his own artistic practice under the pseudonym Mangelos. He created most of his work between the 1950s and the 1970s. Referring to his art as a private experiment (termed no-art), it remained a private matter until the mid-1960s. In 1959, co-founded Gorgona (active 1959-1966), an informal art group named after one of his poems. During the 1960s, Mangelos produced many artworks, and from 1968 onward he partook in exhibitions of visual poetry, drawing on his long-standing interest in poetry and short prose. In the late 1960s, he created a series relating to Picasso, which was displayed at his first solo exhibition in Novi Sad in 1972. Mangelos first exhibited his early works at the Gorgona retrospective in 1977. The first large-scale retrospective exhibitions of his work took place in Belgrade and Zagreb in 1986, bringing him widespread recognition. Following his death in 1987, his work received international acclaim. Mangelos’s art has been included in many prestigious exhibitions such as Transmediale 08: Conspire (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2008), I Am Still Alive: Politics and Everyday Life in Contemporary Drawing (MoMA, New York, 2011), Modernités plurielles: de 1905 à 1970 (Center George Pompidou, Paris, 2013), Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America 1960–1980 (MoMA, New York, 2015), Art in Europe: Facing the Future 1945–1968 (ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2017). In 2000, his work was shown at the National Gallery in Prague as part of the exhibition Beyond Preconceptions: The Sixties Experiment. Mangelos’s work is included in the collections of prestigious international institutions such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Museum Modern Art in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Modern in London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb.
Tabula rasa (white), m.5 dates from the first half of the 1950s, when Mangelos was defining his formal artistic vocabulary as well as the content and message of his art. The piece is part of the series Tabula Rasa, which is one of his most important series. It comprises white, black, and red monochrome works intentionally referencing the art of Kazimir Malevič. The crossed out words “tabula rasa” demonstrate Mangelos’s unique approach to anti-art and his intentional experimentation with the boundaries of image and text. The negation of painting as traditionally conceived and understood spotlights the inadequacy of its communicative possibilities in face of the needs of a new era. The piece also thematizes the necessity of forgetting, linked to the search for a new beginning unburdened by previous realities.
Mangelos (1921, Šid – 1987, Zagreb) was an artist, curator, and art critic. He studied art history and philosophy in Vienna and Zagreb, graduating in 1949 and receiving his doctorate in 1957. A prominent curator, he organized many exhibitions in Croatia and abroad and heavily promoted abstract art independent from ideological and academic influences. He helped organize Salon 54 in Rijeka, the first exhibition of abstract art in Yugoslavia. As a curator, he also partook in organizing the New Tendencies exhibitions and actively supported new media (photography, film, television). Alongside his career as a curator and art critic, he also engaged in his own artistic practice under the pseudonym Mangelos. He created most of his work between the 1950s and the 1970s. Referring to his art as a private experiment (termed no-art), it remained a private matter until the mid-1960s. In 1959, co-founded Gorgona (active 1959-1966), an informal art group named after one of his poems. During the 1960s, Mangelos produced many artworks, and from 1968 onward he partook in exhibitions of visual poetry, drawing on his long-standing interest in poetry and short prose. In the late 1960s, he created a series relating to Picasso, which was displayed at his first solo exhibition in Novi Sad in 1972. Mangelos first exhibited his early works at the Gorgona retrospective in 1977. The first large-scale retrospective exhibitions of his work took place in Belgrade and Zagreb in 1986, bringing him widespread recognition. Following his death in 1987, his work received international acclaim. Mangelos’s art has been included in many prestigious exhibitions such as Transmediale 08: Conspire (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2008), I Am Still Alive: Politics and Everyday Life in Contemporary Drawing (MoMA, New York, 2011), Modernités plurielles: de 1905 à 1970 (Center George Pompidou, Paris, 2013), Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America 1960–1980 (MoMA, New York, 2015), Art in Europe: Facing the Future 1945–1968 (ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2017). In 2000, his work was shown at the National Gallery in Prague as part of the exhibition Beyond Preconceptions: The Sixties Experiment. Mangelos’s work is included in the collections of prestigious international institutions such as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, the Museum Modern Art in New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Tate Modern in London, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb.
