Aleksandar Srnec

Aleksandar Srnec (Zagreb, 1924 – Zagreb, 2010) attended high school where he was taught by Antun Motika. In 1943, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. After World War II, he spent a year at the Faculty of Architecture in Zagreb, and in 1947, he continued his studies at the Academy, which he left for good in 1949. As a young student, in his first year at the Academy, Srnec was one of the founders of the art group IPIKAS, which included Picelj and Ivo Kalina. The Experimental Atelier, or EXAT, was established in 1951, and the core of the group consisted of Richter, Picelj and Srnec, and they were soon joined by Rašica, Zdravko Bregovac, Bernardi and Vladimir Zarahović, who collectively signed the Exat Manifesto. Kristl joined the group in 1952. The EXAT Manifesto brought new reflections, in line with the new times: it spoke of the necessity of fighting against old understandings, of the importance of recognizing abstract art, of the non-existence of a difference between “pure” and applied art, of the necessary synthesis of all arts, and particularly emphasized the activist spirit of the Manifesto, which was not to remain just words but implied practical action. The first public exhibition of the group of painters (Kristl, Picelj, Rašica, Srnec) was held in 1953 at the Croatian Society of Architects in Zagreb, and later that same year at the Gallery of the Graphic Collective in Belgrade. These were the first exhibitions of abstract art in public spaces in the then Yugoslavia and the rest of the socialist world. In the period from 1959 to 1960, he worked on cartoons as an associate of the Zagreb School of Cartoons, where he created sets for three puppet films, and with Dragutin Vunak the animated film “Man and the Shadow” (1960). Following in the footsteps of historical avant-gardes, Srnec conducted artistic experiments and research, always cultivating an interdisciplinary approach. He is best known for his spatial modulators and luminokinetic objects. His last exhibition, a retrospective, was held in January 2010 at the MSU in Zagreb, which, unlike the first one he had with EXAT at the Croatian Society of Architects, was extremely well attended.