Tomislav Gotovac, who recently changed his name to Antonio Lauer, is a film director, a conceptual artist and a performer. Since the early 1960s he has introduced social themes in his work that he approaches critically, using a contemporary language with a radical attitude, which was unseen before in the region. He is the author of the first happening in Yugoslavia (Zagreb, 1967) and the first streaking (Belgrade, 1971), and various photographic series which he presented as movie sequences or as documents of his performances(such as) Showing Elle (1962), Hands (1964), or Streaking (1971). The Straight Line (Stevens–Duke) (1964), is the first from the trilogy of the author’s structuralist films. The film is shot from one camera position using a wide-angle lens, showing a view through the window of a tram. It is based on a rigid structure, reduced action and repetition whereas the purity of the form is complemented by the “arrested” position which incorporates in the film all events on the street.

Antonio Gotovac Lauer (Tomislav Gotovac)

* 1937 Sombor / Serbia and Montenegro
Lives and works in Zagreb, HR

Exhibitions (selected)

2005 Tomislav Gotovac Presents, Art radionica Lazareti, Dubrovnik 1979, HR
2002 Misfits, Kunstraum Kreutzberg/ Bethanien, Berlin, D

1999 Aspekte / Positionen, 50 Jahre Kunst aus Mitteleuropa 1949-1999. MMKSLW. Museum moderner Kunst SLW, Vienna

1990 Rhetorical Image, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, USA
1994 Point-Blank – Installations and Performance, Franklin Furnace Archive,
New York, USA

1988 Das Glaserne U-Boot, Donau Festival, Minoriten Kirche, Krems-Stein, A

1988 Paranoia View Art – Retrospective documents, Galerija DDT, Zagreb, HR

1983 The Other Side-European Avantgarde Cinema 1960-1980, American
Federation of Arts, New York, USA

1982 Retrospectives of Films, Frankfurt, Dortmund, Duisburg, Hamburg, Berlin, D

1979 Collages, Galerije suvremene umjetnosti [Modern Art Gallery], Zagreb, HR

1979 Works and Words, Stichting De Appel, Amsterdam, NL

selected bibliography

The New Art Practice in Yogoslavia 1966-1978. Marijan Susovski (ed.) Galerija suvremene umjetnosti, Zagreb, 1978

Tomislav Gotovac. Paranoia View Art – Retrospective documents. Anđelko Hundić (ed.). Galerija DDT, Zagreb, 1988
Rhetorical Image, Malina Kalinovska (ed.). The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 1990.

Tomislav Gotovac. When I Open my Eyes in the Morning I see a Movie. Aleksandar Battista Ilić, Diana Nenadić (eds.). Hrvatski filmski savez and Muzj suvremene umjetnosti, Zagreb, 2003