Small Graphic Forms

For your home and those you love(s) in the new millennium

Because graphics is both a school of art/life, but also a fluid space of the spirit, hidden from the hustle and bustle of a busy time

The founders of the Graphic Collective, in the early 1950s, organized sales exhibitions of graphics during the New Year holidays and thus mitigated the dominance of stereotypical kitsch versions of greeting cards of cooks and chimney sweeps on the market. The ideas of the artists gathered around the Graphic Collective (and their continuity) that an original work of art enters every home and as a suitable gift animates, delights, educates and nurtures a new audience, has been followed by new editions of Small Graphic Forms exhibitions for the eighth decade. Thus, over time, this camera exhibition became, along with the May exhibition, an important point for the presentation of the realistic scope of contemporary graphic production and an opportunity for its critical assessment.

Undeniably, the concentration of exhibitions dedicated to this creative medium in the past decades, along with numerous specialized international manifestations, affirms the openness of the artistic practice of small-format graphics; thus, in its unpretentious format, it continues to live as a free graphic sheet, carrying within itself all the changes of creative sensitivity, the power of the individual and the peculiarities of a certain graphic medium.

Certainly, it is not only about the trend of this art form and the reminder of early graphics when it was naturally related to the book format. In the synergy of its natural peculiarities, “graphics is the art of meticulous craft, small distance, working at a table – the work of an author’s intimate space, and this is how it is experienced – from the hand, at a reading distance” – wrote professor Bogdan Kršić in his Panegyric in small graphic form.

The atmosphere of the exhibition is maintained by a large concentration of manuscripts of various poetic strongholds; along with the bards of our contemporary scene (1949) which maintain the tension of this exhibition, and new author appearances (2004) certainly renew its creative vitality.

The fact is that new technologies are changing our perception of art and that we live in a media-saturated world full of tensions. That world is dominated by a networked society that communicates more and more often at a safe distance – by e-mail and/or text messages. So where is the place for an exclusive gift, a work of art, graphics, small human attentions, someone will ask? Do the relevant artistic processes and strategies of their redefinition highlight the ever-current issues of the artistic and commercial value of the work?

Despite everything, with its concept of a compact whole, Small Graphics confirms that artistic practice and the rhythm of life can be on the same page; adjectives imaginative, witty, stimulating, positive, fun, un/expected, touching moments of joy. On the occasion of the Small Graphics exhibition, we also end with Andrić’s thought: Be joyful whenever you have the opportunity to do so…

…And a minute of pure joy remains in us forever, like a glow that nothing can dim.

This motto of Ivo Andrić announces the authorial testimonies of a new generation of creators.

Ljiljana Ćinkul