MAPPING 1921. THE CENTENARY OF REFORMATIVE AND AVANT-GARDE PHENOMENA, PROTAGONISTS AND MOVEMENTS IN SERBIAN ART

Abstract

The aim of this article is to map the avant-garde and reformative phenomena, protagonists and movements in Serbian art around 1921. Almost breathtakingly, during 1921 a series of masterpieces were created, which are considered the most significant examples of modern painting in Serbian culture of the first half of 20th century, as well as the avant-garde movement around Ljubomic Micić and the art magazine Zenit. Painters Jovan Bijelić, Sava Šumanović, Petar Dobrović and Milan Konjović (along the exemplary predecessors Branko Popović and Moša Pijade) who were active in early 1920s, mastered the fundamental postulates od modernist painting that stem from avant-garde thinking and reformative experiment: flatness, non-descriptiveness, anti-mimesis, constructive principle in painting composition, self-reflectivity of painting, its declaration as autonomous reality and self-reflective object. It is of utmost importance that the lessons had been mastered in a way to continue with their application, among which the flatness and the declaration of painting as autonomous reality, as a self-reflective object present the greatest achievements.