Zoran Radović

When he in 1966 had his first public demonstration of the work of a “drawing machine“ called Ornamentograph with a pendulum in the Graphic Arts Collective Gallery, Zoran Radović was a student of electrical engineering, therefore, a person totally outside the ordinary formal art education as well as the one who was completely aside the standard profile of an artist. However, the surprising effect of this exhibition, which was supported by a leading art critic Otto Bihaly-Merin, would over the course of several ensuing years bear fruit in a whole series of the artist’s spectacular performances at group exhibitions in the country and abroad, such as Profile VI in Bochum in 1966, the Triennale in Belgrade in 1967, the Biennale of drawings in Bacelona, Konstruktive Kunst – elemente und principien in Nuremberg 1969, Ricerca e progettazione at the 35th Venice Biennale in 1970, Computer Kunst in Munich 1970, at the Youth Biennale in Paris 1971, the Biennale in Sao Paolo 1972, a solo exhibition in the Student Cultural Center in Zagreb 1967, the Youth Center Gallery in Belgrade 1969, and at the Youth Grandstands in Novi Sad 1970. In 1972, Radović moved to Berlin as a receipient of a scholarship to support the latest art researches, after which he soon took part in the The Berlin Szene 71 exhibition in London in 1972. Staying in Berlin, dealing primarily with his scientific profession, Radović further developed his technical methods began in Belgrade with the construction of Electronic Ornamentograph (1970) and Laser Ornamentograph (1972).

In the Serbian art of the 1960s and early 1970s, Radović was a protagonist and representative of the idea of introducing certain scientific postulates and means of work in the sphere of art exploration. In the beginning, entering into the world of the then contemporary art, he alone could not predict the ensuing conceptual consequences of his first moves which led him to specific by undisputed artistic results. With Radović’s brief scientific-artistic episode, in an evident manner, the phase of late domestic modernism was being brought to an end, through an operative but also symbolic transfer from postwar moderate to radical and experimental problem-oriented positions.