MATKO MEŠTROVIĆ

Matko Mestrovic is an active, outstanding and, during diverse historical periods of late modernism, postmodernism and the epoch of globalism, an intrinsic critical and theoretical figure of the Croatian and European intellectual scene. He was a member of  the neodadaist and proto-conceptualist group Gorgona during early sixties. His theoretical work is initially associated with the New Tendencies movement at the turn of the fifties. Mestrovic emerged as a theorist and ideologue of the New Tendencies movement, thus evolving into a theorist of art after informel, a wide range from neodada and neo-constructivism, lumino-cinetics and computer art to design, architecture and environmental studies. Matko Mestrovic today, with historical distance, can be considered a genuine and remarkable founder of the theory and philosophy of neo-avant-guard art and culture in Croatia and Yugoslavia. As a long-time scientific researcher at the Institute of Economics he led interdisciplinary projects on socio-cultural processes of transition and globalization in Croatian and European societies. He wrote several books: From Single to General (1967), Outlines Without Patterns (1978), Theory of Design and Environmental Problems (1980), The World, Consciousness and Dependence (1983), Goods and Freedom (1995), Reality Time (2002). He also edited the almanacs Social Capital and Transition in Croatia (1998) and Globalization and Its Reflections in Croatia (2001).

Misko Suvakovic