In Croatian art of the second half of the twentieth century, the name of Juraj Dobrović is most frequently linked to New Tendencies, a Zagreb movement which marked progressive, experimental, and science-basedtrends which corresponded to similar tendencies of the most progressive global directions in the art of the time. Within this movement, Dobrović’s position stands out through its “ultimate ascetism” (J. Denegri), reflected in an orderly world of geometry and strict planning, unthreatened by incursions from theoutside which could disturb the ideal and idealistic structure of rationally established relationships. In other words, Dobrović incessantly establishes relationships which are generated by a rational mind unoccupied with testimonies about the outside world and its innumerable varieties. Therefore, from the very beginning, and through his forty-year career, Dobrović occupied the same position (even independently of New Tendencies) with regard to reality. He was not interested in reality as a visual appearance but only as a construct consisting of shapes which hold the world together. This represents an organized background filled with regular structures and relationships ontowhich one can graft the variegated abundance of natural forms: a potentiality which creates tree and man, rock and water, as shapes which in their many variations would not survive without their constituent particles. These particles create a grid, a rhythm, an ordered monotony, but also a system shift whichin turn generates a new order springing from the departure from the norm, and it is this which interests Dobrović, as a beginning and end of his art of the “grand scheme of things.” This scheme, however, does not contain the divine particle, the primordial spark which sprang from a single source, but is non-divine and non-human, in a way self-generating, both begunand completed within itself. In Dobrović’s work we will not find too manydifferences between two-dimensional and threedimensional solutions, between line and volume. Therefore, it is difficult to separate Dobrović’s oeuvre into painting and draughtsmanship on the one hand, and that which embodies spatial structures and relief on the other, because the final impression of both – the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional – is the same when it comes to the solution of perceived relationships. These perceived relationships, which represent Dobrović’s peculiarity, originate from aberration, mutation of forms and, finally, they create a shift or “system error” which generates a visual puzzle (it is not surprising, therefore, that T. Maroević identified him as “the Escher of the non-figural”). This makes each of his works, even the most twodimensional and linearly minimalist ones, in reality, a play with spatial possibilities, a consideration of what surprises will greet us if we introduce a change into a system of strict geometry: truncate a cube, interlace two shapes, cut an edge, open up a geometrical body, cross-hatch the lines or make a geometric outline revolve. For this reason, talking about Dobrović’spaintings means that at the same time we are alsotalking about his objects and reliefs, given that their structur al principles are the same. With regard to the international context, Dobrović’s art can be viewed and “anchored” within the movement of European relief-structure artists or European constructed relief artists (A. Dekkers, H. Böhm, H. Glattfelder). They were European artists of the late 1960s and 1970s who worked outside the mainstream trends dictated by America, and theyfocused mostly on relief sculpture. Furthermore, what is impressive about these artists is not their innovation, technical skill or monumental art but their persistent, imperturbable and strict loyalty to the simplicity and purity of the execution of artworks which seem to have been made as an exercise in ascetism. To J. Denegri, they are spiritualists rather than technicians; they are orientated towards manual and meditative matters rather than those which are technological and optical, and in this respect they represent Dobrović’s closest parallels. Indeed, the reliefs Dobrović made in this period resemble strongly the works of some of the relief-structure artists. Therefore, this article highlights individual, specific comparisons between their works and those of Dobrović. In conclusion, it can be said that Dobrović is an artist who, in the most productive period of his career, belongs to the most prominent progressive faction of Croatian art of the 1960s and 1970s, although he refused, almost indignantly, to take part in the noisy character of art as a social event, while his artistic ideas “sprang from a gentle awe of the extent of harmony in which movement and stillness touch” (R. Putar). Dobrović is not in the least interested in the attractive effects and technical innovations used in the art of his time, when it was said that art was married to machines. Although his signature is depersonalized and “technical,” his art works speak of isolation, ascetism, self-control, sedate peace and contemplation, all of which represent human content in a world of “soulless” machines. At the same time, he never accepted the “ludic and relaxing function of art” (I. Župan), offered by some artists during the “era of the machines” in the art of the 1960s and 1970s.
Linen Boxes and Slices: Raoul De Keyser and American Modernism in Belgium in the 1960s and 1970s
