Dimitrije Bašičević

Dimitrije Bašičević was born in 1921, in Šid, a small town in the former Yugoslavia. During World War II, he fled to Vienna where he studied art history between 1942 and 1944 before moving to Zagreb to complete his studies. Bašičević earned a Ph.D. in art history in 1957 with a thesis on Sava Sumanović. Alongside his career as an art historian, critic, and curator, he created art under the pseudonym Mangelos, a name inspired by a small village near his hometown Šid, chosen to separate his artistic identity from his professional life.

Mangelos created conceptual pieces that often combined text, symbols, and abstract forms on unconventional materials such as notebooks, globes, and wooden panels. His art reflected his conviction that society had progressed while art had remained stagnant. He explored themes like war, death, language, and the evolution of thought through series such as Paysages de la Mort, Tabula Rasa, and Pythagoras. His practice, which he called “no-art,” aimed to challenge traditional painting and literature by merging the two into a singular form. This approach questioned the boundaries between word and image, content and form, and redefined the nature of artistic expression. Informed by his interests in philosophy, psychoanalysis, biology, and the concept of “mechanical civilization”—the shift from manual to functional thinking—his work embraced paradox and irony. It combined hermetic symbolism with everyday motifs and maintained a critical dialogue with the avant-garde, conceptual art, and existentialism, while remaining unmistakably his own.

Mangelos gained international recognition posthumously with exhibitions at major institutions including MoMA in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris, and Tate Modern in London. During his lifetime, he was curator of the Gallery of Primitive Art and later directed the Center for Film, Photography, and Television in Zagreb. His contributions to art history and creation earned him a lasting legacy as a pioneering figure who combined intellectual inquiry with radical artistic experimentation.