The emergence of antifeminism in croatian art criticism: The reception of the intimate exhibition at the 1916 spring salon

Abstract

World War I produced a completely new phenomenon on the Croatian territory - a joint exhibition of female artists. This was the Intimate Exhibition of the Spring Salon held in 1916, which represented a harbinger of women's artistic association in this region and brought a wholly new dimension of exhibition practice as one of the results of the first wave of the feminist movement. The paper presents a history of the idea of assembling female visual artists related to the exhibition of Nasta Rojc, Mila Wod and the Croatian folk art that took place in Vienna in 1914, and gives a contextual analysis of the impact of the First World War on gender roles and women's position in society. The main part of the paper focuses on the recording and systematisation of antifeminist utterances which accompanied the 1916 Intimate Exhibition - primarily those by Kosta Strajnic and Vladimir Lunacek- and locates the origins of these utterances in the "feminine stereotype" and the notion of creativity as an ideological component of masculinity (Griselda Pollock). On the other hand, such attitudes provoked a feminist reaction which led to the first openly feminist utterances in the public space (Zofka Kveder, Andrija Milcinovic), while the exhibition itself not only brought visibility to female artists on the Croatian visual art scene, but can be considered as the first step in feminist aspiration towards mastering the visual arts domain of public activities within the dominant patriarchal social model.