A Zagreb Girl at the Bauhaus

Ivana Tomljenović Meller was a Croatian student who was a part of the Bauhaus School of Architecture, Arts and Crafts - one of the most interesting phenomena of the twentieth century. The Bauhaus was a school that laid the foundations of modern, sustainable design from its establishment in 1919 to the closure in 1933. In addition to a revolutionary shift in terms of visual arts, Bauhaus was equally important for the Socialist ideology that had a great influence on its students. 

The spiritual atmosphere of the community, to which Ivana Tomljenović Meller belonged significantly determined her life. While researching the art collection of the artist's nephew in 2008, I run into her final work of art: her photo archive - a visual collage consisting of photographs, fragments of text and pictures from popular culture, newspaper excerpts, advertisements, and other memorabilia. The next eighteen months I spent researching her most unusual and dynamic life that reflected the period's turbulent historical events. The exhibition and the catalogue represent an attempt to reconstruct it.