In Agents of Abstraction, Berlin-based Croatian art historian Ana Ofak uncovers a little-known episode in the history of twentieth-century architecture, one that may appear to be justifiably forgotten, given both its brevity and its ephemeral products. This episode is significant for its historiographic impact, however: it is an exception that puts into question the canonical narratives about the relationship between architecture and ideological representation after World War II while at the same time anticipating some of the more widely known architectural achievements of socialist Yugoslavia.
From 1947 to 1950, the newly formed socialist state commissioned more than a dozen exhibitions from a small group of young creatives from Zagreb, Croatia, including architects Vjenceslav Richter and Zvonimir Radić and artists Ivan Picelj and Aleksandar Srnec. Some of these exhibitions served domestic propaganda, while others were commercially produced for international consumption. All, however, pursued an increasingly avant-garde aesthetic, self-consciously reviving the...
University of California Press