(1947, Belgrade – 2016, Pula)
Mladen Stilinović – Biography
Mladen Stilinović left formal education and developed an early interest in history, theater, and poetry during high school, while actively attending exhibitions. In 1969, he co-founded the student film association Pan 69 in Zagreb with a group of friends. This marked the beginning of his experimentation in the field of film, heavily influenced by cinema and its auteurs. His initial phase of exploration led him to develop an interest in collage, where he started using simple materials to blend visual symbols with poetry containing elements of everyday life. This approach culminated in his first artist book-object, Govorili su mi su ti (They Spoke to Me to You), a limited-edition work utilizing short sentences and slogans. Stilinović’s art employed irony, subversion, humor, and criticism, reacting to both socialist and post-socialist systems. His sparse, minimal, and anti-aesthetic works transformed into sharp critiques of society and politics.
In the second half of the 1970s, Stilinović became a member of the informal conceptual Group of Six Authors (alongside Vlado Martek, Boris Demur, Željko Jerman, Sven Stilinović, and Fedor Vučemilović), which staged exhibition-actions on streets and squares, primarily in Zagreb, but also in Venice, Belgrade, and elsewhere. His first solo exhibition was held at the Nova Gallery in Zagreb in 1976. From 1978 to 1980, he collaborated with the artist collective Podroom, and from 1982 to 1991, he ran the Gallery of Extended Media in Zagreb.
Stilinović achieved significant international recognition, exhibiting at prestigious institutions such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He had major retrospective exhibitions at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Ludwig Museum in Budapest, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, among others. He also participated in the Venice Biennale, the Sydney Biennale, and Documenta in Kassel in 2007.
Through his entire body of work, which includes films, collages, photographs, installations, and video pieces, Mladen Stilinović systematically undermined and provoked established positions of power and imposed social norms and patterns using similar methods. As he once said, “The question is how to manipulate what so blatantly and boldly manipulates you.” (M.S.)