VLADO MARTEK

Biografija

Ex Jugoslavija

1968-1989

Vlado Martek (Zagreb, 1951) is a poet, visual artist and writer. In the mid-seventies in Zagreb, together with Mladen and Sven Stilinović, Fedor Vučemilović, Boris Demur and Željko Jerman, he founded and was a member of the Group of Six Authors. They were among the first who had performed and exhibited their works in public spaces and were dealing with deconstruction of the socialist ideology in Yugoslavia. Martek called himself a pre-poet, and his work pre-poetry, that became the definition of his artistic practice. His creativity includes actions, exhibition-actions in cooperation and communication with the audience, on the streets and in public spaces. He creates works and anti-works, agitations, assemblages, text-diagrams written and drawn by hand. The fundamental feature of his work is the transmedial linking of language and visual arts in drawings, photographs, objects, paintings, actions, performances and installations. By casualness of constant movement and alternations, one can notice the influence of Fluxus in Martek’s work, which he further develops with the influence of the historical avant-gardes, Duchamp and concrete poetry. Martek has remained active in his main field of philosophy and literature and has published numerous artists’ books, self-published books and books of texts, which he considers to be a form of social activism. In addition to the writing in the traditional sense, Martek creates poetic objects, in which he connects the media of literature, philosophy and fine arts.