Text book, 2017.
ISBN 978-953-7875-29-9 (IPU), 978-953-8027-03-1 (ISU)
368 pages, images b/w, 21,5 x 16 cm
Croatian only, softcover
Publishers:
Institute of Art History, Institute for Contemporary Art, Zagreb
Editor and author of the introduction: Ljiljana Kolešnik

The book Radoslav Putar: Art Criticism, Essays and Notes 1961 –
1987 (Volume 1) is a selection of his texts on art criticisms, essays
and notes created between 1961 and 1987, in the period in which
Radoslav Putar was – not only in the role of art critic – but also an
agile associate of the International Art Movement of the New
Tendencies, curator and Director of the Museum of Arts and Crafts,
curator and Director of the Gallery of Contemporary Art, both in
Zagreb, but also a pedagogue-lecturer at the Arts Education
Workshops at the Moša Pijade Workers’ University and teacher at
the first post-war Postgraduate study of design, and a passionate
contributor of public debates on cultural and cultural policies. All of
those different and closely intertwined activities of R. Putar , show
his committed lifelong work on raising the level of visual culture in
his own environment, and have resulted in methodologically
coherent body of work from which, in this edition, emerges a
convincing and complex image of the Croatian art and culture scene
of the 1960s 1970s. With this selection of texts we completed the
work on his entire intellectual legacy stored in the Institute of Art
History and, together with previously published his critical writings
from the 1950s, it is made available to the widest of audiences.

Table of Contents / in Croatian only
Introduction by Ljiljana Kolešnik / In Croatian only

The book is published by the Institute of Art History (IPU) and the
Institute for Contemporary Art (ISU), both from Zagreb. The writing
heritage of Radoslav Putar is stored in the archives of the Institute
of Art History. The Institute for Contemporary Art is working on the
promotion of values set by Radoslav Putar. Since 1950ies he has
been publicly advocating for modernism vs. social realism as one of
the first public figures to do so in then Yugoslavia.
Institute for Contemporary Art has named its annual award for
artists up to 40 years of age in Croatia, established in 2002, after
Radoslav Putar, who by his effort significantly directed Croatian
culture towards the contemporary visual arts language.
His work was also significant in its social aspect because he
promoted the ideas of democracy and advocated dialogue,
tolerance, freedom of expression and the openness to other
cultures. We can hardly imagine today to what extent his work was
indeed heroic, and we can positively assert that his contribution to
theory and practice provided one of the keystones of contemporary
Croatian art and culture.

Ljiljana Kolešnik took her BA degree in art history and comparative literature at Faculty for Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb (1987); MA in Museology/IT at Faculty for Information Sciences