Dimitrije Bašičević Mangelos: Dear friends, dear enemies

18 October – 12 November 2021

Photo: Davor Konjikušić

Dear friends, dear enemies,

if the calculations are correct, mangelos no. 14 ½ is today a globally relevant artist. His slates, books and globes are kept in important museums and coveted by every serious collector. Books are written about him and lectures presented. It has not always been like that. He himself tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to show his works back in the 1960s, but his friends – the Gorgona Group forerunners, did not approve. It was not until much later, that he revealed his manifestos, painted letters, globes and school slates, to the rare visitors, at certain secluded places.
Dimitrije Bašičević was a curator and critic, determined in the struggle for authentic naïve art, new tendencies and abstract art forms. At a time when obstacles could be very dangerous, he fought for introducing exceedingly high criteria for the evaluation of new media. Today, his accomplishments have blurred into the oblivion.
In the introduction in the catalogue of the now-forgotten exhibition Confrontation, organized in 1976, at the City Gallery of Contemporary Art, he writes that the exhibition is composed of works of art from the Benko Horvat Gallery and the Gallery of Contemporary Art, while copies, reproductions and texts on art, are displayed alongside original artworks and given equal treatment as the exhibits. The intention of such an approach is to confront image and copy, image and reproduction, image and word, image and image, old and modern art, as well as image and its consumer.
This exhibition has been curated along similar lines. Manifestos, posters, photographs, catalogues, invitations and writings are exhibited in between tabula rasa (1951 – 1956) and the manifesto on self-governance (1978), with the intention of reintroducing a critic and art theorist, and an artist (or noartist), in the fascinating contradictions of one remarkable person. As for explanations or theories? In his own words:

the most philosophical
and the most theoretical
explanation of noart
is.
noart.

Curators: Sandra Križić Roban and Darko Šimičić

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