MG+MSUM

Ivan Picelj (New Tendencies): New Tendencies 4 Poster, 1986
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Ivan Picelj 

Participant in the New Tendencies movement

1924, Okučani, Yugoslavia, now Croatia - 2011, Zagreb, Croatia

 

New Tendencies 4 Poster, 1986

Courtesy Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb

 

 

New Tendecies International Movement

1961-1973

 

The art movement known by the name New Tendencies was one of the most influential in Europe from the early 1960s to 1970s, with programmed and kinetic art being its hallmarks. It emerged in Zagreb, in a lively spiritual climate opening towards new movements in visual art, music, film, and theatre, at a time when the city had become one of the important cultural centers of Europe.

 

In the period from 1961 to 1973, under the title New Tendencies, the Gallery of Contemporary Art (today’s MSU) organized five international exhibitions that we can see as a continuation and elaboration of ideas developed by some of the participants of EXAT 51.

 

New Tendencies’ aim was the synthesis of diverse art forms from the 1960s and 1970s. Already at the first exhibition in 1961, the beginnings of programmed and kinetic art could be recognized, whose characteristic language would brand the New Tendencies as a movement from the next exhibition (1963) onwards.  Over thirteen years, this international event brought the most renowned artists and theoreticians of neo-constructivist and kinetic art, as well as information theory, to Zagreb, and has left permanent traces on contemporary art in the region.