Salon mladih – „starmala” izložba u ozračju 1968.
The Youth Salon: The ‘Precocious’ Exhibition in the Climate of 1968

Summary/Abstract: The article discusses the circumstances of the establishment of the Youth Salon exhibition in the autumn of 1968 and its role in profiling the socio-political identity of young artists in the following period. The starting claim is that the current knowledge about how much events related to global and local student protests directly influenced the art scene in socialist Croatia and Yugoslavia is relatively modest, that is, that the connection between a certain type of avant-garde artistic practice and particular historical context is based on general assumptions. In order to clarify these ties, the article reflects on the cultural policy that immediately preceded the rebellious year, which was marked by general reform efforts in socialist Croatia and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the second half of the 1960s. The social position of young artists became one of the important topics in regard to the reform efforts in the field of culture, as evidenced by the intensity of discussions at the level of the League of Socialist Youth. The text further explains the material and professional working conditions of young artists and the reasons for their dissatisfaction with the cultural and artistic system. Light is shed on events related to student protests at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in June 1968, which were an immediate occasion for the establishment of the Youth Salon exhibition. The thesis is that the Youth Salon, as a representative type of exhibition organised by the central republican art association (ULUH) and the Central Committee of the League of Socialist Youth, represented a typical parade gesture made by the state, which sought to pacify young people’s dissatisfaction with the general situation in the field of art and culture. As such, the Youth Salon experienced severe criticism in the first years of its existence. It also influenced the politicisation of young artists, who began to engage in criticism of the system as a whole. The controversy over the Youth Salon was also the immediate cause of the identity divergence between the young avant-garde artists, within which two art groups were the leading opponents: the so-called ‘neoplasticists’, gathered around Zagreb’s SC Gallery, and artists gathered in the Art Group ‘Atelier biafra’, who were the initiators and organisers of the Youth Salon in the first years. This antagonism would determine the balance of power on the Croatian art scene in the long run and influence the understanding of the echoes of 1968 in art and culture in general.

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