Gorgona

Gorgona

The Gorgona Group, which consisted of artists and art historians, operated along the lines of anti-art in Zagreb between 1959 and 1966. Beside individual works linked to traditional techniques, the members proposed different concepts and forms of artistic communication, ran a gallery and published the anti-magazine Gorgona. Their interest in existentialism and Neo- Dadaism, and also in Reductionism and Zen philosophy, resulted in activities that surpassed the boundaries of the period’s artistic media. The anti-magazine Gorgona was one such breakthrough. Simply and unobtrusively designed, with works dictated by the form of the magazine, Gorgona contained information about artworks that was primary and not secondary. Each number contained the work of only one artist and was itself a work of art realized in the print medium. By repeating the same photo of an empty shop window, Josip Vaništa emphasized plainness, monotony and irony in relation to expected reception. On a single page of the magazine, he printed a reproduction of the Mona Lisa (No. 6, 1961), thus raising a critical and analytical question regarding the meaning of reproducing a work of art.