The Guerilla Artists

The group of 6 artists, ever heard of them? Me neither. Thankfully, Branka Stipancic took her time to dedicate an evening to introduce a captured audience at the Künstlerhaus Salzburg to their work.

The group, made up of Boris Demur, željko Jerman, Vlado Martek, Sven Stilinović, Fedor Vučemilović and Mladen Stilinović who is teaching a class this summer at the Fortress Hohensalzburg, operatingin the mid-70ies out of a post-conceptual search for new media and ways of expression, turned all of Zagreb into their exhibition space. They would spontaneously hold exhibitions on squares, make art right there on the street - as that was where they wanted to move it - and were always on the lookout for new ways of anarchic rebellion against a system that thankfully did not care all that much anyway.

"It was a kind of ghetto" Branka Stipancic says, "all the artists there had other jobs to survive, and the government didn't care at all what we were doing." She goes on to explain that Yugoslavia at that time was sort of a third party set aside from the western countries but also the communist bloc. "We were free to travel", she says, to the surprise of some of the audience members, "and met other artists, also western artists that came to Zagreb." Here her husband Mladen Stilinović who until then has been quietly sitting in the audience and listening, chimes in to add to the list of artists and other acquaintances. He does this with his usual impish smile, to immediately lean back and disentangle himself again.

The talk then goes deeper into the works of each of the members, which would be too long and complex to describe here. It can be remarked though that, after a period of being forgotten and younger artists not knowing how to deal with their work, artists from that wild period are becoming interesting, as one can see by Mladen Stilinovićs success at the Documenta in 2007 and afterwards. So there's hope  that the rest of the group of artists that were also a close-knit group of friends, and their works will reach the limelight too so we can study their works and their philosophy. [mp]