Polish Modern Art Foundation

Early Croatian Computer Art

Polish Modern Art Foundation in cooperation with the Embassy of the Republic of Croatia in Poland invites you to the exhibition Early Croatian Computer Art, 1971-1976.

The exhibition will present works from fifty years ago, created as a part of an important artistic experiment conducted in Croatia in the 1960s and 1970s in Yugoslavia, under the rule of an independent Communist Party. The experiment was far ahead of those times and it had more influence than it seemed at first as the use of computers in art was extremely innovative back then.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, most people involved in the creation of works of art using a “thinking machine instead of a brush” were scientists, engineers and students who had access to the first computers at universities, in scientific laboratories or state institutes. The term “computer graphics” was first used in 1960 by William Fetter, a graphic artist working at Boeing. Soon after, a definition of computer art was created: “it is an art using computers in the creative process. The art in this sense can be image, sound, animation, performance, video or installation.”

Desiring to make Zagreb a center of diverse modern theories and artistic practices, the organizers of the Nove tendencije exhibitions have proposed to several young IT specialists that they present their computer graphics at the New Trends exhibitions in 1969 and 1973. In the following years, they all gained international recognition, participated in many exhibitions around the world, while continuing their academic careers, or creating in the field of advertising, computer design, animation and video.

Tomislav Mikulić and Vilko Žiljak are still very active internationally, they also presented their works in Poland: Žiljak took part in the exhibition Cartographers: geognostic projections in 1998 at the Center for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, while both artists, Žiljak and Mikulić participated in the exhibition New Art for a New Society in 2015 at the Contemporary Museum in Wrocław.

Share


21 – 30 June 2018

Exhibition Bureau

Krakowskie Przedmieście 16/18, 00–325 Warsaw