The Slovene historical avant-garde and Europe in crisis

Abstract

The article explores artistic initiatives giving shape to the multiple relations between the (theatre) avant-garde and the post-war crisis of identity in Slovene and Central European art and culture. It closely examines manifestative thoughts on Europe in crisis by Srečko Kosovel, the leading Slovene avant-garde poet, and Ljubomir Micić, the leader of the Serbian avant-garde movement Zenitism; Ferdo Delak and August Černigoj’s manifestos of New Slovene Stage; and the concept of an expressionist play by Slavko Grum. The aim of the study is to show how the aesthetic revolutions of the historical avant-gardes of the region from the Adriatic Sea to the Western Balkan, were the artistic and human responses of the avant-garde artists to the newly developed crisis in Europe after 1918.