The book presents photographs that brothers Mladen and Sven Stilinović took as young artists at exhibitions-actions of the Group of Six Artists, an association of artists of which they were members, along with Boris Demur, Željko Jerman, Vlada Martek, and Fedor Vučemilović. The documentary photographs in the book were selected to show the activist character of the group, the atmosphere and situations in the various environments in which they exhibited, the artists and their works, the spectators, the passers-by, and, not least, the time in which everything happened.

The Group of Six Artists organized exhibitions-actions in Zagreb, Belgrade, Venice, on the beach in Mošćenička Draga, and elsewhere, spontaneously, as an informal group of artists who realized their ideas by appropriating a new type of exhibition context. The artworks were often destructive to aesthetic and ethical norms. They would set them up on the grass, lay them on the road, project slides and films onto the house walls, and perform actions that disturbed passers-by. The sudden, mostly one-day exhibitions-actions of the Group of Six Artists adopted the style of guerrilla warfare, the tactic of constant disturbance. They were tiny, yet permanent rebellions, a resistance full of critical spirit and imagination that was simultaneously mocking and joyful. Boris Demur, Željko Jerman, Vlado Martek, Mladen and Sven Stilinović, and Fedor Vučemilović, at the time very young artists, resisted all forms of ideology, and each of them waged his battle in his own way.

The creation of this publication was prompted by Adair Rounthwaite’s scholarly book, “This Is Not My World – Art and Public Space in Socialist Zagreb”. The young professor of contemporary art at the University of Washington in Seattle dedicated her research to the Group of Six Artists and their circle. The book of photographs by Mladen and Sven Stilinović is with its visual character complementary to this topic

The dual-language book, in both Croatian and English, contains 199 black-and-white photographs and an introductory text about the exhibitions-actions and their context by the editor Branka Stipančić, while the designer is Boris Greiner. It was published by the art organization PETIKAT, with the support of Kontakt. The Art Collection of Erste Group and ERSTE Foundation.

Year: 2024
Editor: Branka Stipančić
Publisher: PETIKAT, Zagreb
Language: English
Pages: 208
Print run: 350
ISBN: 978-953-6946-62-4

---

Book launch in Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, October 2024
Photo: Boris Cvjetanović

Book launch in Martin Janda Galerie, Vienna, 5th November, 2024
Photo: Martin Janda & Branka Stipančić