Chronologies
Ivana Bago

MAJ 75 — F

Keywords: artist-publication exhibition in a publication gender issues institutional critique self-organized

Maj 75 was a self-published magazine initiated in 1978 by a group of Zagreb-based artists— the Group of Six Artists, or “the group of friends,” as they refer to themselves in the introductory pages of the magazine.[1] In connection to their self-organized “exhibition-actions,” the publication was conceived as a “magazine-catalogue,” another hyphenated neologism with which they attempted to overcome conventional and institutionalized ways of presenting art. Comprised solely of pages presenting artworks, the magazine can be viewed as an alternative exhibition space, enabling the artists to communicate their work to the public without the mediation and the sanctioning authority of art institutions and curators. Between 1978 and 1984, seventeen issues were published (marked by letters of the alphabet instead of numbers), with an additional one produced in 1990, and commemoratively called Ex-Maj.

The F issue, published in 1981, was conceived by artist Vlasta Delimar as a presentation of female artists who were active within the Yugoslav “new art practice” scene. The introductory page stated that very few female artists had been featured in Maj 75, which was the main motivation for dedicating a special issue to them. The magazine was produced in the home-run print studio of Delimar and her then partner and Group of Six member, Željko Jerman, with whom she worked on technical execution of each issue. By proposing and realizing her concept for the special issue on women artists, including herself, Delimar brought forward her own creative, and no longer just technical, “behind the scenes” contribution to the magazine, together with enhancing the visibility of the work of other Yugoslav women artists.[2]

From the 1950s to mid-1970s, the Yugoslav art scene was dominated by male artists and male artist groups; prominent women artists, such as Sanja Iveković or Marina Abramović were the exception. By the end of the 1970s, the situation started to change and more women artists were becoming active art-scene protagonists, especially with the “return of painting” in the early 1980s. The F issue of Maj 75 is a small testament to this change, even if not all of its contributors have continued to pursue their artistic careers, and today’s audiences would be unfamiliar with some of the artists’ names. A number of the Maj 75 contributions included in the issue were explicit gender-conscious interventions that responded to the history of art as a male-dominated narrative.

Guide for the chronology (Ivana Bago: Something to think about: values and valeurs of visibility in Zagreb from 1961 to 1986)

[1]

The group included Boris Demur, Željko Jerman, Vlado Martek, Mladen Stilinović, Sven Stilinović, and Fedor Vučemilović. The name of the magazine Maj 75 (May 75) referred to the date when the group came together to start its collaborative work.

[2]

Vlasta Delimar is not credited for the concept of this issue of the magazine. However, the assumption that the issue was her idea based on the motivations stated above was confirmed in an e-mail to the author (July 14, 2014), and also in the catalogue titled Vlasta Delimar: To sam ja / This Is I, which accompanied her solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb in 2014, and was edited by Martina Munivrana.

Date: 1981

Concept: Vlasta Delimar

Participants: Breda Beban, Rada Čupić, Vlasta Delimar, Sanja Iveković, Jasna Jurum, Vesna Miksić, Vesna Pokas, Bogdanka Poznanović, Duba Sambolec, Edita Schubert, Branka Stanković, Iris Vučemilović

Location: Maj 75 — F (samizdat)