VADUZ.- In 1959, a number of painters, sculptors, an architect, art critics and art theorists came together in the capital of Croatia Zagreb to found the GORGONA Group. Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein is mounting the first comprehensive exhibition in the German-speaking world for forty years to deal with GORGONA.

The shared aim of Miljenko Horvat, Marijan Jevšovar, Julije Knifer, Ivan Kožarić, Mangelos, Matko Meštrović, Radoslav Putar, Đuro Seder and Josip Vaništa was to establish a new aesthetic practice that differed from practices in socialist Yugoslavia, at the same time engaging in a dialogue with international avant-gardes. The group did not present themselves to the public with programmatic proclamations, nor did they develop a common vocabulary of form. Instead, the group’s activities – in exhibitions, in the “Anti-Magazine” GORGONA, in discussions, correspondence and rather everyday actions – combined a range of creative, processual, language-based and theoretical positions that aimed to examine and engage in a dialogue with the development of art in the west. There were collaborations with a number of avant-gardists of the early 1960s including Piero Manzoni, François Morellet and Dieter Roth. The group disbanded in 1966, but the members remained united by a common world view. They shared a faith in the absolute autonomy of art, and each artist continued to develop his own work in this spirit. Some exhibit distinctly conceptual and minimalist tendencies.

The exhibition presents the joint activities of the members of GORGONA with the aid of writings, photographs and other documents. It also traces in detail the development of the individual artistic strategies before, during and after the group’s activities. Additionally, there will be two displays of works from the Kunstmuseum’s collection dealing with artists close to the GORGONA Group.

The exhibition is a production of Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, curated by Friedemann Malsch. It is accompanied by a publication by Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg Berlin.