Avantgarde Museum

DIMITRIJE BAŠIČEVIĆ MANGELOS
1951

Exat 51
1951

Untitled, 1962, resin, pigment, burlap
			Three structural values, 1958, oil, wire, canvas, 760 x 750
Documentation of the working process, b/w photography by Nenad gattin, 500 x 503

Ivo Gattin (Split, 1926 – Zagreb, 1978): was the leading Informel practitioner in Croatia. After the initial sur- realist inluences, his second solo show in Zagreb in 1957 already fully deines him as an artist of the Informel. Informel in Croatia, together with geometrical abstraction, marks the highest degree of the internationalized language of art. Gattin is the best known representative of its radical strain that completely broke away from the attributes of the traditional pictorial medium (with representation, referential and semantic indicators of an image); introducing the extremely concrete nature of painterly material by usage of various non-painterly materials and techniques; with its tendency towards the monochrome; with its avoidance of the sign, gesture and composition. His1957 exhibition, by faithful negation of all those attributes, until then the presupposed attributes of the medium, according to the art historian Radoslav Putar represented “the most courageous penetration across the frontiers of the known standards.” he image–objects from the 60’s, showcase speciic nature and violence of methods that Gattin employed and brings him to the breaking up of the rectangular shape of a picture, to discovery of the irregular, free formats, which has made his creative work unique in the international context as well. During his stay in Milan, from 1963 until 1967, Gattin clariied his innovative procedure with the manifest in the shape of a textual image drawn in ink on cardboard. he nature of his work that he considers as mutual building up of an artist and an object, he explains with the metaphor of a stream and a rock. he ontological essence of creative process he sees through the attempt of establishing a dialogue with human being that needs to restore his lost faith in Man. For this it is necessary to step out of the existing, sufocating limita- tions. he manifest under the title Il manifesto di Ivo Gattin was irst published in Studentski list, Zagreb on 5/21/1982. Ignorance, misunderstanding and inability of the local milieu to accept the unique nature of his accomplishments, had resulted in the marginal position of Gattin in relation to artists who had used some of the less radical procedures.