Aleksandar Srnec
(1924-2010)
Object 300877, 1977
aluminium, chrome, electric motor
MG-3998
Sculptor, painter, graphic artist and designer Aleksandar Srnec graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1949. He also made animated films.
Srnec was one of Croatia’s leading post-WWII protagonists of Abstraction, progressive design and contemporary visual communication. He was a founding member of the EXAT 51 group of painters and architects and an active participant in the New Tendencies, an art movement of European significance which was of incredible importance in Croatia.
Srnec’s artistic expression features radicalised Geometric Abstraction. In the early 1950s, he constructed his first freely composed mobile kinetic objects. In around 1956 he started experimenting with mobile sculptures and reliefs. In 1962 he devoted himself to lumino-kinetic research, and in 1968 to issues of ambience and the production of kinetic sculptures made of different metal with a high polish finish. He also experimented with pure light.
Aleksandar Srnec’s spatial-dynamic light Object 300877 is made of highly polished concave surfaces, which is set in motion by and changes dynamically with the help of an electric motor, which is part of the object’s construction. The rotation of the object creates optical effects that create a sense of dematerialisation of both the object and surrounding space. The object’s surfaces reflect images of surrounding space, and flickers of red and green which are the colours that bent aluminium strips are painted in on the inside as parts of the structure of Object 300877.
Text: Tatijana Gareljić, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Ana Janković
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb