Dimitrije Bašičević was an art historian, critic and curator of the Gallery of Contemporary art in Zagreb, and in the last thirty years has gradually won world fame as Mangelos the noartist. The Croatian public remembers his retrospective exhibition in Zagreb at the Museum of Contemporary Art in 1990 at which all the themes of his great oeuvre were presented: Landscapes of War and Death, Tabulae Rasae, Negations of Painting, Alphabet, Nostories, Picasso Phenomenon etc., as well as two monographs Mangelos, GSU, Zagreb, 1990, Mangelos no. 1 – 9 ½, DAF, Zagreb, 2007.
 
Mangelos solo exhibition in Gallery Nova puts the focus on the last decade of his work, on the manifestos, theses, projects and notes that he wrote in the 1970s on wooden boards and newspaper cuttings, on globes and in blackened out booklets that had already been printed. In the Manifestos the artist was increasingly inclined towards a theoretical determination of concepts, while at that time as a curator kept track of conceptual art and photography particularly. Having the support from the younger generation, he often exhibited in alternative premises that were run by the artists. In Manifestos he carried on a dialogic and combative relation with everything he studied, and his range of interests was broad, including philosophy and art, psychoanalysis, biology and physics…  In a particular form of expression and his very subjective viewpoints, he promoted his theory of the second civilisation: the development of society and the non-development of art, the crisis and death of art, explaining this through the gap between the two civilisations – the handwork and the machine civilisation. The first was founded on old, naive and metaphorical and the second on functional thinking. Humor and irony were present in the manner in which he set out his thoughts: he criticised authorities and combined different languages in the shift between the pretentious message and the witty sentence. Aware that this kind of writing was not a reflection of the precision of the functional language he plead, he summed up his manifestos in concise, clear forms that could be fitted onto a base he found important – the globe. 
 
Taking a look at this important oeuvre it can be observed that Mangelos, making the journey from monochrome drawings to philosophical reflections, sometimes approached the feeling of the absurdity of existential nihilism, the spirit of Gorgona and Fluxus, and in the seventies Conceptualism.Visually a very coherent work, it is unique in its open dialogic form, intellectual independence and stimulating scepticism. In the formation of his own particular language and rules, paying no heed to conventions, Mangelos created a completely authentic work that he himself characterised as noart.
B.S.
 
Dimitrije Bašičević (born 1921, Šid, Serbia – died 1987, Zagreb, Croatia) lived and worked in Zagreb, Croatia. He was a member of the Croatian neo-avant-garde art group Gorgona that was active in Zagreb from 1959 to 1966. He has had solo exhibitions at prestigious institutions such as Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna (2016), Peter Freeman Gallery, New York (2016, 2012, 2001),  Fundacíò Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona (2004), Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (2004), Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto (2003). Important group exhibitions: Guernica, Musée national Picasso, Paris (2017 – 2018), Modernitées plurielles 1905- 1970, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015), Transmissions: Art in Eastern Europe and Latin America 1960 – 1980, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015), Museum of Parallel Narratives: In the Framework of L’Internationale, Museu d’Arte Contemporani de Barcelona (2011), Promises of the Past, The National Centre for Art and Culture Georges Pompidou, Paris (2010), Eye on Europe: Prints, Books & Multiples/1960 to Now, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, (2006), 54^th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh (2004 – 2005).
 
His are to be found in the following collections: Museum of Contemporary Art (Zagreb), Tate Modern (London), Musée Georg Pompidou (Paris), The Museum of Modern Art (New York), Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves, Porto, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, among others.
 
In 2003 several monographs were published in English, German, Spanish and Portuguese.
For the exhibition in Vienna, Gallery Martin Janda published a catalogue Mangelos – Manifestos, Theses, Projects and Notes by Branka Stipančić.

The programme is supported by:
City Office for Education, Culture and Sports of the City of Zagreb
Foundation for Arts Initiatives
Kultura Nova Foundation
Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia