Reviews by Igor Zidić in Sarajevo’s Izraz (1962)

Abstract

Aiming to critically react to the institutionalized conservatism of Croatian early 1960s, Igor Zidić published two reviews in Sarajevo’s Izraz: on American action painting (March 1962) and on the current work of Frano Šimunović (October 1962). Based on the idea of oblivion, the two articles insisted on different artistic and social implications. Zidić followed in the footsteps of Harold Rosenberg and his understanding of the genesis of modernism and its consequences. Searching for a point of support that would combine modernist exclusivity and the local circumstances, he halted at the current work of Šimunović, before isolated stone evidencing the level that abstraction could reach on the Croatian art scene. However, in Zidić’s case, all the  analogies and references to the modernist context broadly understood did not help in the implied intention to find a suitable interlocutor in the Bosnian-Herzegovinian environment. Conservative inhibitions were more pronounced and, apart from a brief conflict with Babić’s theses, Igor Zidić’s attempt remained hidden on the margins of general historical interest.