Vidosava Golubović

The Zenit Periodical (1921-1926)

In February 1921, in Zagreb, the poet Ljubomir Micić launched Zenit, an international magazine for art and culture, as it said in the subtitle; around its zenitist poetics and aesthetics, the magazine gathered representatives of all branches of art, both in the narrow and a broader meaning of the term – of poetry, literature, fine arts, theatre, film, architecture, music – from Yugoslavia, Russia and the West. A total of 43 issues were published, containing contributions in various languages (Ivan Goll’s “The Zenitist Manifesto” was printed in German). After being published regularly for over two years, and after switching the editorial office from Zagreb to Belgrade (the last Zagreb issue, no. 24, was published in May 1923), Zenit was published irregularly, occasionally coming out in the form of a multiple issue (Zenit no. 26-33 was published as an eightfold issue). Apart from the irregularity of its publication, it was characterised by changes of format and changes in outlook in terms of pictural-graphic design.

The material contributed to the magazine was not classified according to any particular principle: sometimes the lead-in text was a manifesto, other times poetry or a polemical text. As opposed to the relatively irregular arrangement of the material published, the editor introduced a permanent column entitled “Macroscope”, containing, for the most part, polemical, critical and informative texts. Among other things, the column was intended to react quickly and in a lively manner to the latest trends in literature and art, in Yugoslavia and abroad, to provide information and at the same time take a view, all this using a very austere kind of language.

From the very first to the last issue, the periodical was edited by its founder Ljubomir Micić. In the first issues, immediately after launching the magazine, the editorial staff consisted of a number of members, who represented the periodical outside of Zagreb, where it was published then. Thus Boško Tokin was its representative from Belgrade, from Prague it was Lj. Micić’s brother Branko Ve Poljanski, and from Paris Rastko Petrović. The co-editorial activities of the French-German poet and writer Ivan Goll led to great changes in the make-up of the editorial staff. Immediately after Goll’s entry in the editorial staff, B. Tokin suddenly suspended his editorial cooperation with Zenit. As a co-editor, Goll was active until issue no. 13, published in 1922. From then onwards, Micić edited Zenit on his own, occasionally with the cooperation of his brother Branko.

Zenit was launched at a watershed cultural, political and historical moment: it was preceded by events such as the First World War and all its consequences, the October Revolution (its echo is felt in Branko Ve Poljanski’s “October Manifesto”, published in his authorial periodical Svetokret [Worldturn] in 1921, wherein the author draws a line from the Universe – the turning of the Earth around its axis in cosmos – to the inner, subjective revolution of the spirit), the establishment of a common state, made up of three peoples, separated until then by their immanent processes of national development, and the post-war Europe as a scene where various avant-garde groups and movements pursued their activities. Apart from this, Zenit may be viewed as a dialectical moment of provocation and a turning point in connection with the aesthetisation of the Balkans and its culture, which, until then, had not participated in the artistic and historical events of Europe on an equal footing. These external factors left their mark on the initial programme concept of the periodical, mediated through the most general of slogans about the negation of the war and the building of an international brotherhood of artists, along with a radical calling into question of the “sentry/border guard-like” and the “soldier-like” destiny of the Yugoslav people and arguing in favour of creating a new man and a new art.

The postulate about art as a stimulus to life and the belief in its role in the transformation of man are based on the ideas of Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche: “Beauty will save the world.” Around this more or less general ideational and aesthetic platform and the desire to “mobilise the post-war atmosphere of spirits”, Micić gathered poets and writers from the cities and cultural centres of the entire Yugoslavia: from Zagreb, Belgrade, Ljubljana, Novi Sad, Vinkovci, Sombor, Split and Zemun. Also, the magazine spontaneously established cooperation with Prague (Dragan Aleksić), Paris (Rastko Petrović, Miloš Crnjanski, Dušan Matić) and Vienna (Zlatko Gorjan), where members of the Yugoslav intelligentsia found themselves having entered university studies after the end of the First World War. On the other hand, the idea about the mobilisation of spirits was extended and became the foundation of Zenit’s aesthetic programme through the slogan of the need for peace and cooperation among nations, countries, continents. Micić wanted, first of all, to abolish national boundaries and to establish contact with the literary and artistic avant-garde of Europe, Russia, both Americas and China, that is to say, with those trends, movements and persons that were, according to his own evaluation, of topical interest and aesthetically purposeful. A metaphor of the above is Micić’s programmatic text “Shimmy in the Graveyard at the Latin Quarter” (1922), its source of inspiration being of cubist-constructivist provenance, with a characteristic radio-film stylisation and with Rodchenko’s kiosk as the spatial centre and the gathering place of zenitists from Yugoslavia and from abroad with the exception of Marinetti, who got left out on account of the insistence of the futurists on the national homogeneity of Italians – F. T. Marinetti: “Only Italians can be futurists.”

Outside this level of the magazine, Zenit, as the organ of a particular artistic group, aimed to aesthetically establish and profile the Balkan formula of the avant-garde movement, so that, through its original programme and the attendant artistic practice, it would be on a par with the other avant-garde movements in Europe of the time. In order to achieve this, it argued in favour of the artistic and cultural emancipation of the Balkans from the West and from Europe, for a dethronement of its traditional values, exemplified not by Pushkin, as in the Russian futurists’ manifesto entitled “A Slap in the Face of the Ruling Taste” (signed by D. Burliuk, Kruchenykh, Mayakovsky and Khlebnikov), but by Molière, Dante, Shakespeare, Kant, and in favour of turning the process of the Europeanisation of the Balkans around, in the direction of a Balkanisation of Europe. It prophesied that Europe would perish, condemned it for its lack of ethical principles, comparing it to an old immoral woman on the basis of negative revaluations of mythological and cultural associations and analogies. The turning-point forces of the project of the Balkanisation of Europe were based upon a request for a revolution of art that would be achieved through the expected and wished-for renewal of Europe by means of a Balkanocentric neobarbarism and primitivism, that is to say, they were founded upon that mood characteristic of Western, and especially of Russian avant-garde. Zenitists praised the New Balkans, the new Balkan culture and art as the main postulates of their programme, on the grounds of a healthy Balkan dynamism; they proclaimed the new man, personified by the great individual Barbarogenius, as a cultural hero who introduces an essentially new principle in the existing order of things in life and art. To begin with, it was a lone, separate figure who, like Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, delivers a sermon from the mountains, appeals to man to strive for great heights, above mediocrity, then it became a mystical figure of man-hero, thought out in the key of cosmism, spiritually opposed to the patronage of Madam Europe, and in the 1930’s, during Micić’s exile in France, he became the literary hero of the latter’s novel Barbarogenius Deciviliser. In the course of its five-year lifespan, the periodical passed through several development phases, which left a mark on its formal characteristics, structure, programmatic and artistic activities. The lack of a firm programme core in the first issues of the periodical gave it the character of an international almanac. The intermingling of lyrical motifs and methods with the genre of travel writing was the organisational principle of M. Crnjanski’s poetry (“Girl”). The poetry of Lj. Micić was not yet programmatic in character: it was machinist, after the model of the other futurism, and autobiographical – which was a mark of modern poetic expression. Branko Ve Poljanski encloses the poetic subject within the circle of his poetry. In the poem “In the Sign of a Circle”, he resorted to the principle of verse shifting, dynamically combining the graphic-versificatory method of circular writing of verses with semantic elements. As far as Boško Tokin is concerned, he played a very important role when it came to imparting knowledge about the cultural and literary trends within the framework of French and Italian modernism and avantgarde. Thematically, he revealed to the local public renaissanceism, miraculism, a term taken over from the post-war film theory in France. He presented the futurist theme of aviation and the ideas of the futurist-pilot F. Azari. While the poems of Rastko Petrović were created on the basis of interest in archaic, primitive cultures, Stanislav Vinaver was prone to ascribing a revolutionary character to classical themes (“Euphorion”). The representative nature of expressionism is reflected in the programmatic formulations of zenitists, in the poetry of C. Goll, Josef Kalmer, Georg Kulka, and as regards the realm of fine arts, in the creative work of Vilko Gecan and Egon Schiele. There was a pronounced interest in Russian postrevolutionary art: in Proletkult, Lunacharsky, scythism in the poetry of A. Blok, Mayakovsky, imaginism. The poetry of Igor Severyanin is from his émigré phase, and the verses of the dynamist Valentin Parnach are from the period when he worked in Paris. The poetry of French poets reflects late symbolist aspirations and the aspirations of literary cubism, built on the tradition of G. Apollinaire: Marcel Sauvage, Paul Dermée, André Salmon. Apart from the poetry of Valentin Parnach, motion was also suggested by the metaphors and images in the poetry of the Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro, the founder of creationism and a member of the group of young Spanish and Hispano-American ultraist poets.

From issue number five, published in 1921, Zenit was truly a forum-like organ of the movement. It was programmatically strengthened by Ivan Goll’s Zenitist Manifesto, written in German, and The Manifesto of Zenitism by Lj. Micić, I. Goll and B. Tokin, printed as the first volume in the periodical’s library. Writers from Belgrade who did not wish to adjust their individual poetics to the programme concept of the group severed their connections with Zenit through a statement published in the Zagreb periodical Kritika [Criticism] (towards the end of 1921). His closeness to zenitism, already quite obvious at the time, motivated I. Goll to reject expressionism in his text entitled “Der Expressionismus stirbt” (issue no. 8), for the sake of innovativeness that he considered to be outside the boundaries of the recognised and the known linguistic and artistic norms, such as, for example, the pristine freshness of words, the youthfulness of scythism and Balkanism.

The dadaist Dragan Aleksić was formed as an artist in the artistic environment of Prague, where his texts, belonging to the genres of manifestos, poetry and dada-essays, were written. At that time, he started contributing to Zenit. Aleksić’s manifesto entitled Dadaism (issue no. 3), published before the manifesto of zenitism, substitutes abstraction for reality, shifting sense and reason in the direction of futurist-dadaist brutism, expressing preference for Melchior Vischer and his novel A Second through the Brain, suprematism, circus art, communism, the “secondary-abstract” primitiveness of the “occult-nervous” dada man.

The programmatic statements about the renewal of poetic language are to be found in the basis of I. Goll’s manifesto Word as Origin. An Attempt at New Poetry (issue no. 9). For his starting point, he relied on fundamental futurist and cubist ideas. The futurist poetics provided the basis for the concept of an austere, unambiguous poetic word, a solitary sentence. The similarity with cubism is reflected in the realistic character of the reduced futurist word. These programmatic principles implicitly determined the verses of Lj. Micić in the cycle of numbered poems entitled “Words in Space”, as well as the poem of I. Goll Paris brennt, published as the second volume in Zenit’s library.

Even during the course of its first year of publication, Zenit established direct contacts with Hungarian (the activists gathered around Lajos Kassák) and Czech avantgarde artists (Karel Teige’s Devětsil [Nine Forces] movement, whose seat was in Prague, and later with its branch in Brno). The early links established between Zenit and Devětsil originated from a time when this avant-garde group did not yet have its programme organ, but appeared in older and more recent periodicals (F. Šmejkal). Thus Zenit was the only foreign periodical to publish (in issue no. 7-8) the works of Czech avant-garde artists, stylised in the spirit of magic realism and primitivism. Even though he had, as a contributor to Zenit, programmatically proclaimed the death of expressionism, having become a member of the editorial staff, Goll affirmed the work of the followers of the expressionist periodicals Der Sturm and Die Aktion (K. Heynicke, C. Einstein, F. R. Behrens, C. Goll, J. v. Heemskerk) and of Berlin dadaists (R. Hausmann, R. Schlichter).

From the point of view of poetics development, the first definition of zenitism was based on explicit references to expressionism. Soon afterwards, the intention was to achieve more original programme postulates, in keeping with the slogans and ideas about Barbarogenius, Balkanism, Balkanocentrism; in early 1922, these ideas would assume real gravity in the light of further development of the magazine and the movement. This phase of development was still characterised by the co-editorial work of Lj. Micić and I. Goll, but now Goll gave Micić priority when it came to writing programmaticpoetic texts, showing no inclination to add his own authorial touches to these texts. At the same time, the magazine made a forceful turn in the direction of the Russian avant-garde based in Berlin. The main mediators were Ilya Ehrenburg with his book A vse-taki ona vertitsja (And Yet It Does Move), and the artistic tandem Ehrenburg-El Lissitzky with their magazine Veshch. It can be claimed that Zenit was among the first periodicals in Europe to provide a broad and comprehensive insight into new artistic trends in Russia. This refers, first of all, to notions and phenomena such as constructivism, production art and veshchism, some of which found their place in the theory and programme of zenitist poetry; the ideational substratum of a poem was designated its “subject”, whereas the term “construction” comprised the process of constructing, that is, producing poetic language and its result: poem-construction. Before the publication of its Russian double issue (no. 17-18, 1922), Zenit published various contributions by Russian artists, poets and writers: V. Tatlin’s Draft of a Monument to the Third International, the programme of the Veshch periodical, the poetry of S. Yesenin and V. Khlebnikov, an overview of the development of Russian avant-garde art, presented by means of a description of new types of exhibitions and a new way of exhibiting works of fine art. The above-mentioned double issue of Zenit, edited by Ehrenburg and Lissitzky, represents their programmatic and ideational attitude, expressed in the Veshch periodical, but also provides a cross-section of the innovations and current trends in the sphere of literature, fine arts, theatre, music and film, starting from the prerevolutionary futurists, through the suprematists, right down to the contemporary practice of the constructivists (El Lissitzky’s PROUN projects, the works of V. Tatlin and A. Rodchenko). The poetry of domestic contributors of the period was dadaistically estranged, in view of its production of meaning (D. Aleksić), as well as intertextual and quotational (S. Živanović), polemical with elements of blasphemy (Ve Poljanski), programmatic (J. Mester), realised based on the principle of radio-film lyricism (Lj. Micić), emotionally coloured, its starting point being V. Kandinsky’s theory of inner sound, and subsequently made devoid of meaning through dadaist constructions (M. S. Petrov). The genre of poetic travel writing (B. Poljanski) was also practised.

Theatrical innovations were to be found in surrealistic and futuristic surroundings. The former notion was understood and realised in the tradition of Apollinaire, and is encountered in the foreword to Ivan Goll’s play Methusalem oder Der ewige Bürger (Potsdam, 1922). The latter is present in the short synthetic form of futurist theatre (E. Dundek, A. Čebular), whose literary role models were Marinetti’s theatrical syntheses, also published in Zenit. Lj. Micić cultivated a synthetic form of expression in the sphere of prose.

Foreign poets who contributed to Zenit in 1922 included the dynamist V. Parnach, the Spanish ultraist G. de Torre, the Devětsil poets A. Černík, A. Hoffmeister, H. Walden and F. R. Behrens from Germany; French poetry and prose were represented by P. Albert- Birot, P. Dermée and J. Epstein.

In the year 1923, when only four issues of the periodical were published (February- May), priority was given to public activities. These had actually begun in mid-1922, by a publicity trip to Germany, the purpose of which was to affirm Zenit and zenitism and to establish connections with artists who were of the same or similar artistic orientation, and were continued through a programmatic concept comprising the organisation of zenitist evening events, lectures, and attempting to establish a zenitist theatrical practice and make it independent (the Zagreb group Traveller).

The poetry of the most consistent followers of zenitism contained, to a greater degree than before, revolutionary pathos, to which were added cognitive forms of anticapitalism (Ve Poljanski), as opposed to the other contributors, in whose verses the attitude towards woman (M. Mikac) and the experience of the material world (A. Jutronić) were permeated with a futurist sensibility. Polemics in verse continued, containing direct allusions to political issues (S. Živanović), as did topics deeply involved in cultural issues (Ve Poljanski). In his programmatic text Radio Film and the Zenitist Vertical of Spirit, Lj. Micić insisted on a fusion of poetry and film.

Issue no. 24, of May 1923, wherein the polemic with Stjepan Radić and his view of Europeanism and Balkanism turned into a critique of Croatian culture in its entirety, marked the end of the successful Zagreb phase of Zenit. Soon afterwards, Micić moved the editorial office to Belgrade, where he strove for a number of months to relaunch the magazine, his efforts hindered by the lack of enthusiasm of the new surroundings and the negative reactions of the press in Belgrade. All these obstacles notwithstanding, in February 1924 issue no. 25 came out, to be followed in October, after an uncommonly long pause, by the eight-fold issue no. 26-33, which, in its turn, was followed by issues no. 34 and no. 35, in November and December respectively.

In the course of its being published in Belgrade, there began a synthetic phase in Zenit’s work. As a consequence of the introduction of a new programmatic course, cooperation with some contributors came to a stop. Thus Risto Ratković claimed that he broke with zenitism when he felt that he would “see it a synthesis of all the rebellious isms” (issue no. 38, 1926).

The synthetic phase of avant-gardism did not weaken the international aspect of Zenit. On the contrary, during the course of 1924 it was even somewhat intensified, only to decrease with time in favour of contributions supplied by the periodical’s domestic collaborators, open to the trends and influences of surrealism and the literary and artistic left. We single out the contributions of J. Voskovec, a member of Devětsil, the Italian futurists R. Vasari and S. Pocarini, the Russian futurist G. Petnikov, with whom direct cooperation was established owing to I. Ehrenburg. An expressionistically coloured poetic experience, inspired by spiritual forces, dominated in the poetry of F. R. Behrens, H. Walden, K. Liebmann and the Swedish poet living in Finland Elmer Diktonius, a leftist with socialist leanings.

Zenit manifested an uneven attitude towards surrealism. Even though it rejected surrealism as a product of the bourgeois culture, it did accept some of its forms and ways of acting. It opted for some typically surrealist themes or phenomena, calculated to achieve the effect of aesthetic, social or political provocation. In the manner of Paris surrealists, zenitists sought to thematise the Moroccan crisis, Marxism, or were prone to propagandistic-provocative public appearances and public action by means of texts written using the genre of the open letter, poster or pamphlet. On the level of manifestos (R. Ratković), their attitude towards primitivism and the cult of the East coincided with the attitude of French surrealists in their early phase, which was especially manifested in issue no. 3 of the journal Surrealist Revolution.

Zenit filled its leftist ideational inclinations with social and revolutionary content and views about the need for a more direct influence on the physical, social and political reality. While some contributions assumed the form of an open protest (for example, on the occasion of the politically motivated murder of the Bulgarian poet Geo Milev), poetry affirmed proletarian principles or gave priority to social themes, related to workers: Poljanski, Micić. In order to achieve the same or similar aims, zenitists resorted to photography or political posters, permeated with an a priori political humour and grotesqueness – the works of the Russian artist Viktor Denisov Deni.

In the course of its publication, Zenit also paid attention to the nature of the magazine, to its formal side and to magazine types. When it had solidified its position in theoretical terms, from a magazine-almanac of an informal group of collaborators Zenit turned into a programmatic organ. The increasingly intense development of dadaism at the expense of the original movement drove B. Poljanski towards initiating the adadaist, antidadaist review Dada-Jok (1922). A shift in the direction of propagandistic activities in Germany (Munich, Berlin) pointed to the need for publishing a poster issue of the magazine, printed as a supplement to the so-called German issue, a kind of a thematic catalogue of zenitist contributions intended for the purpose of agitation. The printing of Zenit in the folio format, the so-called Zenit-diary, could be viewed within the framework of the Russian avant-garde slogan about art coming out into the street, for the periodical came out before the Yugoslav public with a bold request for establishing diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia. Similar experiments continued later on: these included the Russian issue, edited by I. Ehrenburg and El Lissitzky, its cover stylised in the constructivist and PROUN manner in honour of Zenit, an issue in the form of a catalogue of the International exhibition mounted by Zenit, a new genre of a periodic publication, made up of the texts comprising the programme of the zenitist evening events held in Zagreb (issue no. 21, 1923), an issue composed in the genre of the calendar. Finally, let us mention the consistently maintained February rhythm of publication, overwhelmingly reminiscent of the beginnings of the Italian futurism in Paris, combined over time with the October rhythm, probably as a result of establishing an inspirational analogy with the Russian October.

Irina Subotić

The Visual Culture of the Zenit Periodical and Its Publications

Although literature was the dominant discipline in the Zenit periodical, it is possible to follow its ideologically coloured visual culture from the very beginning, both on the pages of the magazine and in all Zenit-related publications and events: in special editions published by Zenit, in leaflets, posters, at exhibitions and within the framework of the Zenit gallery, that is, the Zenit collection. The Micić brothers, Ljubomir and Branko Ve Poljanski, advocated the view that all creative potentials, ideas and implementations should be expressions of the current era and that, in the contemporary social and cultural context, visual effects are the crucial factors of communication. That is why the content of Zenit – theoretical articles, manifestoes, criticism, views in favour of specific, mostly young artists and critical European artistic trends and phenomena, reproductions and the entire graphic and typographic layout of all Zenit-related publications, were mainly functional. They contributed to the syncretic concept of zenitism in all its phases of development. The interpretation of the visual culture presented in Zenit is therefore identical to the meaning of zenitism in its entirety - as an avant-garde movement within the framework of European, Western, Russian – Eastern, and Central-European avantgarde.

Almost every European trend in the sphere of fine arts that was of topical interest in the early 1920s was reflected in Zenit. Following the initial clear orientation towards expressionism, the focus being on young, unrecognised artists, zenitism practiced the ambivalent interpretation of dadaism, futurism and accepted the new wave of cubism. In its mature phase, Zenit introduced new, abstract art of varying orientation: from the activism and lyrical abstraction of Kandinsky, to various geometrical tendencies and constructivist movements – purism, neoplasticism, Bauhaus, especially constructivism, productionism, and functionalism.

The first issues of Zenit - both the articles and reproductions – were characterised by expressionist individualism and artists who were critically disposed towards the bourgeois society of the early 20th century (Vilko Gecan, Egon Schiele, Rolf Henkl, Carry Hauser, Franz Bronstert, Jacoba van Heemskerk). But even though it was dominant, expressionism was not the only movement present in the initial phase of Zenit: very early on, cubism, futurism and dadaism featured on its pages.

In his article “Theatre in the Air”, Boško Tokin pointed out the multidisciplinary experiments of the Italian futurist Fedele Azari, who looked at the airplane as an “extension of the body”, with dynamism and motion, pantomime, acrobatics, set design and urban spectacles, unconventional sounds and an anti-painterly way of using colour. Introducing the public to contemporary Paris exhibitions, Rastko Petrović presented the absence of sentimentalism and any narrativity in diverse variants of the then influential cubism, singling out the works of Ossipe Zadkine, Alexander Archipenko and Jacques Lipchitz – sculptors with whom Ljubomir Micić, director and editor if Zenit and his brother, poet and later painter Branko Ve Poljanski would immediately establish personal contacts. The French theoretician Florent Fels explained cubism as “a powerful means of creating a new aesthetics” and “a synthesis of space”, which Zenit underscored by printing reproductions of works by artists of various cubist orientations – A. Gleizes, L. Survage, R. Delaunay, and later P. Picasso, V. Foretić-Vis, O. Zadkine, J. Czáky and especially A. Archipenko. A poeticised variant of cubism was also advocated in Zenit by young Czech authors – poets, painters and architects gathered round Karel Teige and leftist revues - J. Havliček, A. Wachsman, L. Süss, B. Piskač, A. Hoffmeister. Dadaism was given an important place in Zenit – both in the form of favourable presentation (the periodical published reproductions of works of Berlin dadaists George Grosz and Rodolf Schlichter) and with critical and ironic commentary. The presence of dadaism was the result of the socialising of Poljanski and Dragan Aleksić in Prague, the latter’s texts on Schwitters and on Tatlin, the meeting with Berlin dadaists, joint actions, matinees and evening events staged with collaborators in many Yugoslav cities. The launching of Branko Ve Poljanski’s periodical Dada-Jok [jok (colloquial) = nope, translator’s note] (issue number two was published as a leaflet entitled Dada-Jok. Zenit-Ekspres) brought to the fore the similarities and the differences between two avant-garde movements – zenitism and dadaism, through the use of dadaist devices within the framework of zenitism for the purpose of refuting dadaism itself. Dada-Jok was characterised by the most radical graphic design yet, in keeping with the concept of the periodical, which presupposes the simultaneous presence of dadaist, antidadaist and adadaist methods, typographic freedom in dealing with words and letters, photomontages, collages, photographs containing allusive inscriptions, works of amateurs and the use of non-artistic objects in conjunction with slogans and dada poetry, graphic signs and the like. From December 1922, Micić exhibited a markedly negative attitude towards dadaism, from the moment when the programme of Zenit gained a new character, within the constellation of the European art oriented towards surrealism and Breton’s irreconcilably negative attitude towards dadaism. And even though the later period of Zenit is marked by a number of elements and personalities close to surrealism, the plastic arts of the periodical did not follow that phenomenon.

Micić expressed his programmatic principle concerning the changed nature of art, that is, nonrepresentional, abstract painting, in his reviews of exhibitions and in the theoretical article “Contemporary New and Surmised Painting”, in which he abandoned the ideas of expressionism and argued in favour of art based on the principle of non-mimeticism, freedom of creation, the secondary place of form, the precedence of “the spiritual – abstract – absolute”, relying on the examples of Kandinsky, Chagall and Archipenko.

Zenit affirmed the work of Hungarian leftist activists, led by Lajoš Kassák. This meant approaching geometrical abstraction and constructivist tendencies as a collective act. At the same time, in the course of the year 1922, Russian avant-garde assumed concrete and applied forms in Zenit: the periodical reproduced Vladimir Tatlin’s Draft of a Monument to the Third International, a brilliant utopian and visionary work of new technology and ideology, whereas Rodchenko’s kiosk became a meeting point of all zenitists in Lj. Micić’s zenitist radio-film “Shimmy in the Graveyard at the Latin Quarter”. Owing to intensive cooperation with I. Ehrenburg and El Lissitzky, editors of the Veshch (Вещъ) periodical and the most prominent representatives of the Russian Berlin, Zenit followed the phenomena of topical interest in Russia – public celebrations and urban spectacles, the adorning of ships, trains, streetcars, the squares and the streets of Moscow and St Petersburg, which strengthened Micić’s view that exhibitions had to have a social role, that is to say, they ought to be intended for the broadest circles of viewers. The peak of this editorial policy is The Russian Issue (Zenit, no. 17-18), dedicated in its entirety to Russian avant-garde in all artistic disciplines. The issue was edited by Ehrenburg and El Lissitzky (the latter is the author of the cover design for this issue of Zenit, in the form of his project of the new – PROUN).

There were echoes of Russian avant-garde in the Zenit criticism as well: Ve Poljanski wrote a text entitled “Through the Russian Exhibition in Berlin”, which A. B. Nakov considered to be, “on the basis on any criteria, among the most inspired and profound reviews of this exhibition”. Poljanski did not hide his elation over the revolution carried out by Russian avant-garde artists – Malevich, El Lissitzky, O. Rosanova, Tatlin, Rodchenko, Gabo, Chagall, Burliuk, X. Bogouslavskaya, Archipenko, Altman, A. Exter.

A certain balance in establishing relations between the East and the West was achieved in Zenit by following the concept of neoplasticism in Theo van Doesburg’s text “Will to Style”, which advocates the ideas of collectivism, logic, synthesis, energy, truth and purity. On the other hand, the apologia of the social influence of art and architecture – which became dominant during a later phase of zenitism – was contributed to by Jozef Peeters’s “A Catechesis of Friends of Art”: in the propaedeutic form of ten commandments, the text points out the idea of a social project in which geometrical abstraction would become a part of modern life. For a practical application of this concept, Zenit published works of objective abstraction – by Peeters, L. Lozowick, H. Behrens- Hangeler, and a joint collage by Micić and Jo Klek entitled In the Name of Zenitism. The functionalisation of such ideas had already been promoted on the pages of Zenit through the works of A.-P. Gallien, K. Teige, L. Kassák, L. Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, A. Rodchenko, K. Malevich, M. S. Petrov, Jo Klek. Fitting in with the programme of the Balkanisation of Europe, in his text “Anti-social Art Should be Destroyed” Micić argued in favour of the internationalisation of all cultural values, underlined the importance of folk skills and gave preference to craft schools over museums – which he described as tombs and “the pantheons of idleness”. During a later phase, the periodical increasingly reprinted political caricatures as a substitute for classical fine arts works. They provided ironic comments at the expense of capitalism, the bourgeois society, the League of Nations, functioning in the same manner as Micić’s systematically fought battle with bureaucracy, the state administration, the police, the media and the like. Moreover, it was a declaration of war to the entire imperialist-capitalist, non-democratic world, made in a utopian hope that it was possible to build a new, different and better world.

In absolute discontinuity with the Serbian graphic art of the time, Mihailo S. Petrov (“a new asset of ours”, as Zenit wrote) marked the first phase of zenitism (1921) by his black-and-white linocuts programmatically provided for the pages of Zenit (Self-portrait with a Pipe, Fragments of Our Sins /The Sound of Today/, Linoleum, Rhythm, Zenit). Petrov, who later contributed to other avant-garde periodicals as well (Dada-Tank, Út), represents an example of a dual allegiance, to both expressionist and abstract art, close to Kandinsky. His linocuts, made in symbiosis with poetry, were especially valuable as such, being the first examples in Serbian and Yugoslav art.

In the mature phase of Zenit (1923-1925), the most memorable mark of zenitist art was left by Josip Seissel (known in zenitism under the pseudonyms Jo and Josif Klek). At international exhibitions in the 1920’s (held in Belgrade, Bucharest, Bielefeld, Moscow), he represented Zenit, which published his collages, photomontages, architectural drafts, drawings, watercolours, temperas, sketches for theatre costumes and a curtain, advertisements, ex-libris etc. He was responsible for the graphic design and layout of some of Zenit’s editions (Effect on Defect and The Monkey Phenomenon by Marijan Mikac), and he was also the author of the Zenit exhibition poster. His abstract and multidisciplinary work was used by Micić to identify PAFAMA (Papier-Farben-Malerei, the Serbian version of which was ARBOS – (h)ARtija-BOja-Slika [paper-colour-picture]) as an authentic phenomenon of zenitist art. His work is characterised by narrativity, humour and irony of dadaist provenance. Relying on the constructivist principles of the valuation of materials and exploration of space, Klek became involved in non-representational art, quite exceptional in Croatian and Yugoslav art of the early 1920s.

For the purpose of the internationalisation of the movement, Micić used the work of A. Archipenko for his programmatic text concerning zenitist approach to the sculpture. In 1923, he published a luxurious, richly illustrated monograph-album Archipenko – New Plastic, containing a foreword entitled Towards Opticoplastics in which he envisaged a kinetic future of the sculpture.

The current creative achievements and the theoretical premises of abstract art were most complexly reflected in Zenit by Wassily Kandinsky. Micić published reproductions of his work, emotionally presenting him to the Yugoslav public as “a great and famous Russian master – an artist and ideologue of a new epoch in painting”, “the father of abstract or the so-called absolute painting”, “an apostle of man’s mystical creative soul!”. In a text written for Zenit, Kandinsky specified the basic artistic principles (content, form, analysis, synthesis, study of art, etc.). However, even though Kandinsky’s works existed in Belgrade and were exhibited, even though he was written about and his texts were translated, the reception of his art could be discerned solely in rare paintings by Jovan Bijelić – Abstract Landscape and Struggle between Day and Night (the latter one was in Micić’s collection until his death).

As for Vladimir Tatlin, he is a model, leitmotif, symbol and paradigm for zenitism: first of all, D. Aleksić wrote of tatlinism as machinism, in 1922 Tatlin was presented as a constructivist, and in 1923 zenitism got involved in the ideas of Tatlin’s constructivism. His draft design for A Monument to the Third International, published a number of times in Zenit and in zenitist publications, was identified with the greatest technological achievements of the 20th century, the ideals of internationalism, Bolshevism, communication possibilities, great artistic imagination, cosmic processes, planetary proportions and geometrical order. He was given an important role in Micić’s texts” Shimmy in the Graveyard at the Latin Quarter” and “The Categorical Imperative of the Zenitist School of Poetry”, which meant a conscious identification of zenitism with the utopian model of the Monument itself and the entire Russian avant-garde, and even the Communist International.

When it came to fine arts criticism, Zenit dealt rather harshly with all the remnants of previous times, with vague attitudes and petty bourgeois norms, with artists who did not opt for exploratory creative postulates, with poor organisers of moderate exhibitions, with followers of imported ideas. A sarcastic attitude was manifest towards well known critics and writers - Isidora Sekulić, Jovan Skerlić, Miroslav Krleža, and especially towards Bogdan Popović, on account of his lack of knowledge of the principles of contemporary artistic creation, especially the importance of Negro art for cubism. The criticism was direct, ironic, and sharp: by negating traditional and conventional trends, Zenit affirmed the values of the young (Slovenian Youth Club, first of all, Božidar Jakac and France Kralj, Avgust Černigoj, then Jovan Bijelić, Mihailo S. Petrov etc.).

The establishment of a collection of avant-garde works for Zenit’s gallery, presented to the public at the editorial office of the periodical, first in Zagreb, then in Belgrade, and for a while even in the Paris suburb of Meudon, reflected great social and educational ambitions on the part of Zenit. The gallery advertised (starting from the double issue 17-18, 1922) works of artists from Russia, France, Yugoslavia, Denmark, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Holland, Germany, and the United States. The works were advertised as “futurism, cubism, expressionism, ornamental cubism, suprematism, constructivism, neoclassicism and the like”. This broad scope reflects realistically the situation on the art scene of the 1920s, and it would provide the basis for Zenit’s great International exhibition of new art, organised in Belgrade by Micić in April 1924, featuring more than one hundred exhibits by very significant 20th-century artists (Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, Archipenko, Delaunay, Charchoune, Gleizes, Peeters, Zadkine, Paladini, Prampolini and others). Some of the participants were of local significance only (Balsamadjieva, Katchulev, Bojadjiev, Willink, Hansen, Medgyes, Freudenau, Helen Grünhoff- Elena Gringova), and the domestic scene was represented by Vilko Gecan, Jo Klek, V. Foretić-Vis, Vjera Biller and M. Petrov. Judging by the reviews, Branko Ve Poljanski also exhibited his work, a collage that has so far remained unidentified. The exhibition did not receive a lot of publicity, and was therefore not very well attended, but Micić later wrote “No boycott had any effect” – evidently convinced of the purpose and the value of such an undertaking.

Zenit spoke in favour of modern means of communication – photograph, film, poster, advertisement. A photograph conveys a message from the text, pictures illustrate literary ideas (I. Goll’s Paris brennt); photo-portraits are documents about personalities, theatrical performances are preserved thanks to to photographic reproductions; a collage photograph assumes the status of an autonomous work, and as a medium, it is in the service of the idea and the programme of the periodical (Dada-Jok, the photo collages of Jo Klek and Micić In the Name of Zenitism, Politics – Polka, the zenitism segment of the international exhibition held in Moscow in 1926). Zenit regularly followed film as an art form, advertised it, had a critical attitude towards the repertoire, and the silhouette of Charlie Chaplin, published a number of times in the periodical, assumed the role of a symbol of the art of film in general. The text “Modern Advertising” (supported by a reproduction of a work by Jo Klek) stressed the necessity of the readability and impressiveness of the message, form and colour, first of all by means of photography. Zenit offers, as the best example of publicity, a tailor’s dummy made on the basis of sculptures by Rudolf Belling, from one Belgrade haberdashery shop. It is an example of an almost abstract form applied in life (“without a head, without a chest, without legs, without arms”). From the very first issue of Zenit, the exceptional graphic design of the advertisement for the manufactured goods of Adler, Borovic & Neusser from Zagreb was very much in evidence, made up of dynamically arranged triangles and double lines (close to the works of El Lissitzky, especially his poster Fight White with Red). In posters and leaflets printed for various events, lectures, some issues of the periodical, Zenit paid particular attention to typographic and semantic details: the best example was the poster announcing the Great zenitist evening event of January 31st, 1923 in Zagreb, consisting of four Malevich-like squares and typical zenitist slogans (“Zenitism is fighting for a new Balkan art, for eternal youth, for the victory of Barbarogenius”, “Against European paralysis, against sentimentality, against literature, for a Balkanisation of Europe”); Tatlin’s Draft of A Monument to the Third International was also included – which clearly positions Zenit within the framework of the international scene, constructivism and action-filled future.

By way of its programmatic orientation, Zenit introduced daring and unconventional typographic solutions as a specific pictural and scriptural form of action, with an autonomous cultural and visual voice. The outlook, the layout and the dimensions of the periodical often changed, which perhaps depended on its finances, but was certainly connected with the general orientation of zenitism as a movement. As an important segment of the overall editorial policy, the outlook of the periodical consistently followed the changes in its concept and content: the first three issues contain an expressionist secession stylisation of the title, using neo-Gothic-type letters, which some avant-garde artists (such as Schwitters and Kassák) were very fond of, with a Cyrillic З [= Z] thrown in among Latin letters for good measure. This parallel use of both scripts would remain characteristic of Zenit as long as it continued to be published. Staring with issue number four, changes were introduced that gradually led to purely geometricised, constructivist and functional solutions. Many of the issues had reproductions of works of art on the cover as an expression of the programmatic orientation of the periodical. The uniqueness of each issue of Zenit was enhanced by the subsequent marking of each copy by hand, using numbered rubber stamps, in line with El Lissitzky’s idea of constructing a book. Micić syncretically connected word and image, sense and meaning, message and idea. In his book Rescue Car (published in 1922 as a second edition of the banned book of poems A Hundredfold Damnation on You), Malevich’s suprematist method of juxtaposing black and white areas was used to visually underline the banned verses and some incriminated words.

Through its graphic identity, Zenit determined the guidelines of the avant-garde movement: the typographic solutions were instrumental in the contextualisation of polemics, criticism and loud statements, manifestoes and the overall programme. On the covers of zenitist publications (Rescue Car, Topsy-Turvy, Anti-Europe) and other printed materials (posters, leaflets containing verbal messages, advertisements), we encounter the PROUN system, an agonistic and dynamic, non-meditative immersion into the multilayered spatial and temporal representation as a model of the modern world. The unmistakeably modern sensibility is read in relation to the architecture presented in Zenit: Tatlin’s Draft of A Monument to the Third International, Micić’s text about purism, excerpts from Le Corbusier and Osenfant’s periodical L’Esprit Nouveau, the article “New Systems of Building”, signed Architect P. T., Viktor Kovačić’s Slaveks building in Zagreb, singled out as the only valuable Yugoslav edifice, reproductions of A. Loos’s buildings – the best example of ”Contemporary Architecture”, E. Mendelsohn’s Einstein Tower and the projects of T. van Doesburg and C. van Eesteren, connected with W. Gropius’s text “International Architecture”. Micić’s text “Belgrade without Architecture” criticised the revival of the tradition but the neglect of the only one that is autochthonous – that of a “Balkan building.” Ve Poljanski sharply criticised the conservative-looking Pavilion of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes at the International Exhibition of Decorative and Industrial Art in Paris in 1925, for it did not reflect the actual vitality of modernism and the ideas of nation’s creators. On the other hand, the article is full of praise for the streamlined pavilion of Le Corbusier and Osenfant’s periodical L’Esprit Nouveau and the Russian constructivist pavilion designed by K. Melnikov – “the most interesting one in the entire exhibition”. Despite its emphatic insistence on functionality, Zenit was also open to visionary, imaginative, almost abstract architecture: it published reproductions of sketches Zeniteum I and Zeniteum II (issue no. 35) and Villa Zenit (issue no. 36) by Jo Klek, these being the only works by a Yugoslav architect published in this periodical.

In its final years, Zenit found it increasingly difficult to get published; its utopian aspirations gradually petered out, which led to its isolation and the historisation of its own past, accompanied by increasingly political and documentarist activities; the number of contributors gradually diminished, and the periodical began to be published irregularly. This was followed by police raids and bans, and Micić was exiled. After ten years in refuge, he returned to Belgrade. He tried unsuccessfully to relaunch the periodical, but this was the time of the German occupation and famine, of poverty and new ideological structures that followed the war. His wife and collaborator Anuška died, and Micić increasingly led a quixotic struggle for values that were no longer recognised. Zenitism remained in the distant past, which even the few remaining contemporaries did not remember fondly. Interest in Zenitism began to revive in the 1960s, and especially in the 1970s, first in the sphere of literature, and then in the sphere of fine arts. New interpretations emerged, exhibitions were organised (The Third Decade – Constructive Painting, Branko Ve Poljanski, Zenitism, Zenit and the 1920’s Avant-garde and others) and a number of relevant studies were published. Zenit provided the inspiration for Branko Vučićević and Karpo Aćimović Godina’s exceptional film Medusa Raft and numerous theatrical plays, documentary dramas, video works, radio and television programmes, novels and articles, feuilletons, anecdotes. Now the Zenit periodical has been digitalised, reprinted, and some artists find in it a broad area of inspiration for the typographic and pictural realisation of their works (the Fia art group and Publikum’s calendars, New Moment, Mirko Ilić, Paula Scher). Collectors express great interest in it; there is even a street and a new magazine called Zenit, which first issue appeared in June 2006, reminiscent of its “namesake from the 1920s”, “an important European periodical”, which “left a deep and lasting mark in Serbian culture” – launched with a goal to “preserve the spirit of the time”. In this way, Micić’s Zenit is revived in the best possible way.