Zenit

by Ljubomir Micić (Editor), Boško Tokin (Contributor), Rastko Petrović (Contributor)

Zenit (Zenith) was the most important avant-garde magazine published in the former Yugoslavia and one of the most significant publications of the broader European avant-garde movement of the early 20th century. It was launched in February 1921 by the artist Ljubomir Micic (1895-1971) and published monthly in Zagreb and Belgrade until December 1926, when it was banned by the authorities. A total of 43 issues were published, as well as one poster, 'Zenitismus', and one issue of a daily Zenit newspaper dated September 23, 1922. 'Zenitism' was an avant-garde movement born around the magazine. The Zenitist Manifesto of June 1921 proclaimed humanist and anti-war ideals, and called for the creation of a new and united Europe. Besides Micic, noteworthy contributors to Zenit included Milos Crnjanski, Dusan Matic, Stanislav Vinaver, Pablo Picasso, Alexander Blok, Jaroslav Seifert, Wassily Kandinsky, Vladimir Tatlin, Kazimir Malevich, Tommaso Marinetti, Marc Chagall, Ilya Ehrenburg, and many others.

Unknown Binding

Published February 1, 1921

About the author

Ljubomir Micic (1895-1971) was an avant-garde artist with an unbearable temper which filled his life with conflicts. Born to a Serbian family in Sosice, Austro-Hungary (nowadays Croatia) he attended the Lyceum in Zagreb where he started expressing literary and playwriting talents. He was mobilized for Austro-Hungarian army in 1915, but simulated madness at the Eastern Front. Being sent back home in 1917, he got involved into acting, journalism, art criticism and writing in general. In the newly formed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, Micic worked as a teacher for a while. After gaining some recognition for his poems and novels he decided to start the magazine “Zenit – the international Review for New Art”.

The first “Zenit” came out in Zagreb in 1921. It was an experimental publication covering arts and culture by innovative typographic solutions. It featured poems, manifestos and essays, announced events and made use of several languages. The chief editor was Ljubomir Micic, helped by his brother, Branimir Ve Poljanski, Bosko Tokin and Paris-based expressionist poet Yvan Goll . The group gathering around the Zagreb magazine referred to themselves as “Zenitists” thus forming a genuine Southern Slavic avant-garde movement, “Zenitism”. They were hostile towards the academic artistic canons, bourgeois society and popular religiosity. Technological progress, radio, cinema, photography, jazz music and advertising industry amazed them. The list of contributors to the magazine constantly changed due to numerous quarrels with Micic, but the contents of Zenit were always provocative and controversial. By 1924, the magazine had already raised various polemics in Zagreb and some if its monthly issues were censored. Its printing moved to Belgrade, where it stayed until the magazine was finally banned in 1926. Legal ban was proclaimed because of the text “Zenithism through the prism of Marxism”. Micic, prosecuted for obscenity and Bolshevik propaganda, escapes to Paris, together with his wife Anuska, who was a regular contributor to Zenit. The couple stays in Paris for decade, deepening the connections with the leading avant-garde artists. From 1936 onwards they live in Belgrade, but Micic keeps corresponding with Paris and publishing in French. It is in these pre-war years when his concept of Balkan Barbarogenius, popularized in Zenit, was finally shaped.

Reviews

[Dora · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a shame I don't know Cyrillic and was unable to read a few texts (or actually most of the texts in the later issues). Nevertheless, the magazine provides valuable insight into the minds and lives of its authors, their social circles and gives a general image of the political and social situation in Central Europe (or rather the contrast between the Balkan and the West as Micić would say). I would dare to say it is more a political than an art magazine, even through its imagery and poetry. The only issue I had with it is its repetitiveness (in terms of its propaganda; not the actual contents).