Symposium papers
Published on
The Women’s Art Club and Women’s Group Exhibitions in Zagreb from 1928 until 1940
Darija Alujević and Dunja Nekić
Abstract
In 1927 Croatian painters Nasta Rojc and Lina Crnčić Virant, inspired by their British colleagues, founded the Women’s Art Club in Zagreb. From 1928 until 1940 the Club organized group exhibitions of its members. The main idea of the Club was to improve arts and crafts, to organize female exhibitions and to collaborate with other international women associations. The Club took part in the organisation of the exhibition of Bulgarian women artists and the exhibition of the Little Entente of Women held in 1938 in Zagreb. Women’s Art Club was an important factor of the female artists’ emancipation – organizing the first female group exhibitions in Zagreb.
Darija Alujević is a Senior Associate at the Fine Arts Archives of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Zagreb. She graduated with a degree in Art History and Italian language and literature from the University of Zagreb where she is currently preparing a dissertation on Croatian sculptress Mila Wod (Ludmila Wodsedalek) (1888-1968). Her primarily field of interest is Croatian and European art of the first half of the 20th century, particularly sculpture and female artists. She is a member of the team at the research project Manifestations of Modern Sculpture in Croatia: Sculpture on the Crossroads between Socio-political Pragmatism, Economic Possibilities and Aesthetical Contemplation financed by the Croatian Science Foundation. She has been the author and/or collaborator in a variety of exhibition projects including: Allegory and Arcadia: Motifs from Antiquity in the Art of Croatian Modernism (2013), Klovićevi dvori Gallery, Zagreb; The Challenge of Modernism. Vienna and Zagreb around 1900, Belvedere, Vienna (2017), etc.
Dunja Nekić is the Head of the Collection of Old Photography in the Museum of Arts and Crafts. She studied Art History and English Language and Literature at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb. Since 2010 she has been enrolled in postgraduate studies with a thesis on the Women’s Art Club (Klub likovnih umjetnica) which existed in the interwar period in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Her primary interest is in the reception of women artists and photographers since the interwar period. Along with research and curatorial work in photography, she also worked on several EU projects relating to digitisation of cultural heritage.
