Yugoslav Perceptions and Translations of Pop Art during the 1960s

Abstract

Abstract This essay investigates four exhibitions linked to Pop art that took place in former Yugoslavia in the 1960s: Olja Ivanjicki’s Pop Art (1964, Belgrade), New Figuration of the Belgrade Circle (Belgrade, 1966), and the two US-sponsored Pop Art (1966, Zagreb, Belgrade) and The New Vein: The Figure (Belgrade, 1969). The discussion explores the reception of Pop art in socialist Yugoslavia and the ways in which Yugoslav artists deployed the style as a vehicle to address political events, histories, and new phenomena, such as Yugoslavia’s orientation towards a market economy and the development of consumerism as a result of the country’s opening to the West. The essay reveals how the Yugoslav reception of Pop art was bound up with issues of national and political identities, aesthetics, and gender.