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9-2016

Evocations of Byzantium in Zenitist Avant-Garde

Architecture
Jelena Bogdanović
Iowa State University, jelenab@iastate.edu

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Evocations of Byzantium in Zenitist Avant-Garde Architecture
Abstract
The Byzantine legacy in modern architecture can be divided between a historicist, neo-Byzantine architectural
style and an active investigation of the potentials of the Byzantine for a modern, explicitly nontraditional,
architecture. References to Byzantium in avantgarde Eastern European architecture of the 1920s employed a
modernist interpretation of the Byzantine concept of space that evoked a mode of “medieval” experience and
creative practice rather than direct historical quotation. The avant-garde movement of Zenitism, a prominent
visionary avant-garde movement in the Balkans, provides a case study in the ways immaterial aspects of
Byzantine architecture infiltrated modernism and moved it beyond an academic, reiterative formalism. By
examining the visionary architectural design for the Zeniteum, the Zenitist center, in this article, I aim to
identify how references to Byzantium were integrated in early twentieth-century Serbian avant-garde
architecture and to address broader questions about interwar modernism. In the 1920s, architects,
architectural historians, and promoters of architecture came to understand the Byzantine concept of space in
ways that architects were able to use in distinctly non-Byzantine architecture. I will trace the ways Zenitism
engaged the Byzantine architectural construct of total design, in which structure joins spirituality, and related
philosophical concepts of meaning and form derived from both Byzantine and avant-garde architecture. This
reassessment of Zenitism, an Eastern European architectural movement often placed on the margins of the
history of modern architecture, has broad implications for our understanding of the relationship between
tradition and modernism.

Disciplines
Architectural History and Criticism | Byzantine and Modern Greek

Comments
This article is from Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 75 (2016): 299-317, doi:10.1525/
jsah.2016.75.3.299. Posted with permission.

This article is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/arch_pubs/78

Evocations of Byzantium in Zenitist Avant-Garde
Architecture

jelena bogdanović
Iowa State University

T
he Byzantine legacy in modern architecture can history of modern architecture, has broad implications for
be divided between a historicist, neo-Byzantine our understanding of the relationship between tradition and
architectural style and an active investigation of modernism.1
the potentials of the Byzantine for a modern, explicitly non-
traditional, architecture. References to Byzantium in avant- The Byzantine Legacy in Early Twentieth-Century
garde Eastern European architecture of the 1920s employed Serbian Architecture
a modernist interpretation of the Byzantine concept of
The neo-Byzantine style was one of numerous eclectic his-
space that evoked a mode of “medieval” experience and cre-
torical styles developed in the nineteenth century and widely
ative practice rather than direct historical quotation. The
used in European architecture by the 1920s. Architects and
avant-garde movement of Zenitism, a prominent visionary
architectural historians turned to Byzantine architecture as
avant-garde movement in the Balkans, provides a case study
a source of inspiration out of sociopolitical and theological
in the ways immaterial aspects of Byzantine architecture in-
concerns as well as aesthetic preferences.2 Religious, institu-
filtrated modernism and moved it beyond an academic, reit-
tional, and palace buildings across Europe incorporated
erative formalism. By examining the visionary architectural
“typical” formal elements from Byzantine Christian Ortho-
design for the Zeniteum, the Zenitist center, in this article,
dox churches, particularly large and prominent domes and
I aim to identify how references to Byzantium were inte-
monumental interior decoration in mosaics or frescoes with
grated in early twentieth-century Serbian avant-garde archi-
religious figurative themes (Figure 1).3 Architects of this
tecture and to address broader questions about interwar
period were inspired by Hagia Sophia and its restoration,
modernism. In the 1920s, architects, architectural histori-
despite the fact that many of them had not personally experi-
ans, and promoters of architecture came to understand the
enced the church or studied its architecture. Byzantine
Byzantine concept of space in ways that architects were able
vaulted spaces inspired architects and engineers who devel-
to use in distinctly non-Byzantine architecture. I will trace
oped new aesthetics for modern building types.
the ways Zenitism engaged the Byzantine architectural con-
Byzantium’s association with Greek roots, Roman imperial
struct of total design, in which structure joins spirituality,
traditions, the Balkans, and the Eastern Mediterranean caused
and related philosophical concepts of meaning and form de-
Western Europeans to see it as “Oriental,” as regressively
rived from both Byzantine and avant-garde architecture.
primitive and underdeveloped, hierarchically less significant,
This reassessment of Zenitism, an Eastern European archi-
more unstable, and more decadent than the Gothic.4 Ironically,
tectural movement often placed on the margins of the
this essentially colonial attitude allowed a reevaluation of the
Byzantine legacy. In nineteenth-century France, a group of
Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 75, no. 3 (September 2016),
299–317, ISSN 0037-9808, electronic ISSN 2150-5926. © 2016 by the Society radical architects and architectural historians, including Henri
of Architectural Historians. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for Labrouste and Félix Duban, promoted Byzantine architecture
permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of
as a kind of avant-garde mode.5 According to their theory, the
California Press’s Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/
journals.php?p=reprints, or via email: jpermissions@ucpress.edu. DOI: 10.1525/ Byzantine was the “new Greek” (néo-Grec) because it formed
jsah.2016.75.3.299. a transition between academic classical antiquity and its revival

299
Figure 1 Anthemius of Tralles and Isidorus
of Miletus, Hagia Sophia, 532–37, Istanbul,
Turkey (Oscar Wulff, Altchristliche und
byzantinische Kunst [Berlin-Neubabelsberg:
Alademische Verlagsgesselschaft
Athenaion, 1914], plate XXII).
during the Renaissance. They associated Byzantium’s critical
period of unpredictability and disjunction with modern life,
similarly a period of constant change and transition.
In Central and Eastern Europe, as in other parts of
Europe, the academic revival of Byzantine architecture was
divided between romantic, unconventional modes of creative
expression, often lacking historical accuracy, and structural
and aesthetic qualities useful for the development of modern
architecture.6 In the Balkans, where Byzantine medieval
churches survived, Byzantine architecture could have been a
tangible architectural and cultural heritage rather than a
product of the distant and exotic East, as it was in France or
Great Britain. In the newly established Kingdom of Serbs,
Croats, and Slovenes (1918–29) enthusiasm for historic and
social rebuilding through architecture gave rise to a peculiar
“Serbo-Byzantine” style that became the official national
style (Figure 2).7 This style, which Western Europeans could
have considered Oriental, was based on the neo-Byzantine
revival found in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in particular
in Vienna.
From the mid-nineteenth century onward, a strong inter-
est in Byzantine art at the University of Vienna informed
academic architecture in the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
especially that of architect Baron Theophilus Edvard von
Hansen (1813–91), a professor at the University of Vienna.
Hansen remains best known for his neoclassical design of
the Academy of Athens, the University of Athens, and the
300 JSAH | 75.3 | SEPTEMBER 2016
National Library in Athens—the “Trilogy.” His knowledge
of Byzantine and Islamic architecture in Attica was matched
by his deep understanding of German neo-Romanesque
Rundbogen and neo-Gothic Spitzbogen styles.8 These neo-
medieval hybrid styles provided him with an academic route
for the development of a Viennese neo-Byzantine style,
which was essentially an imaginative combination of various
Byzantine and non-Byzantine elements, including some from
Islamic and Jewish architecture. Hansen had several Serbian
students, including Svetozar Ivačković, Jovan Ilkić, Dušan
Živanović, and Vladimir Nikolić.9 After finishing their stud-
ies, these architects returned home, bringing with them the
Viennese academic neo-Byzantine style, which became espe-
cially prominent in Serbia between 1880 and 1914. This style
provided the foundations for the Serbo-Byzantine national
style of the 1920s created by Serbian architects, some of
whom had never left Serbia.10 As Carl Schorske has demon-
strated, Byzantine architecture remained exotic and foreign
in Vienna, which meant the neo-Byzantine style simulta-
neously transformed and rejected its traditional cultural asso-
ciations.11 Paradoxically, the ideological agenda of the
Viennese neo-Byzantine style inflected the Serbo-Byzantine
architecture of the 1920s.
Following the major academic trends in Europe, Serbian
architects included formal references to the ecclesiastical ar-
chitecture of Serbia and the Byzantine Empire, combining
Orthodox Christian religiosity and culture. They claimed

that the Serbo-Byzantine style reflected the identity of the
new kingdom, especially its Serbian territories.12 As a result,
idiosyncratic “medieval-modernist” Serbo-Byzantine solu-
tions were used both for major civic projects as well as for
churches.13 The Serbo-Byzantine style, like its precedent in
Vienna, was essentially an imaginative construct that used
various Byzantine, vernacular Serbian, and academic Western
European architectural elements as anachronistic decorative
tools. By the 1920s, Belgrade was an important regional cen-
ter for Byzantine historical studies because of the strong his-
tory department at the University of Belgrade, the work of
which was complemented by archaeological and architectural
research into Byzantine heritage in the Serbian territories.14
Seminal books on Byzantine art and architecture, such as
Oscar Wulff’s Die Byzaninische Kunst (1914; second edition
1924) circulated widely.15 Serbian architecture students went
to Italy to study Byzantine art and architecture, such as Saint
Mark’s Basilica in Venice.16 In 1927, the second International
Congress of Byzantine Studies was held in Belgrade.17 While
neo-Byzantine architecture was officially promoted in Serbia,
however, academic circles in Serbia did not critically examine
EVOCATIONS OF BYZANTIUM IN ZENITIST AVANT-GARDE ARCHITECTURE
Figure 2 Svetozar Ivačković, Petrović
Chapel, 1893, New Cemetery, Belgrade,
Serbia (photo courtesy Aleksandar Kadijević).
it with regard to its roots in Western European sociopolitical
thought.
In 1920s Serbia, historicist Serbo-Byzantine architecture
was not universally accepted. Neo-Byzantine architecture
was belittled as one of many “archaeological” revivals and
criticized for being imitative and derivative, thus defying two
of the major imperatives of modernism—originality and
authenticity.18 As I will demonstrate, a region-wide interest in
Byzantine architecture also inspired avant-garde architecture
in Serbia. The theoretical platform of Zenitist avant-garde
thought incorporated the Byzantine past, the Balkans, and
Christian Orthodoxy as part of its program.
Zenitism and Architecture
In the 1920s Zenitism was the major visionary avant-garde
movement in the Balkans.19 The name Zenitism derives from
the word zenith—meaning the highest point in the celestial
sphere directly above the observer—revealing the group’s
ambition to situate itself high in contemporary avant-garde
discourse of the post–World War I world. Zenitism was
301
founded by poet, literary critic, and polemicist Ljubomir
Micić (1895–1971) in Zagreb, Croatia, in 1921 (Figure 3).20
In the same year, Micić published “Čovek i umetnost” (Man
and art), which served as the Zenitist manifesto, and launched
the international journal Zenit to promote the mission of
the movement.21 The initial group of Zenitists was small, but
its members aimed to create an international presence from
the movement’s inception. The first Zenitist manifesto was
signed by Micić, who then lived in Zagreb; by Belgrade nov-
elist, literary critic, and film artist Boško Tokin; and by
French-German poet and writer Ivan Goll.22 Similarly, the
editorial staff of Zenit included members living in other parts
of Europe: Boško Tokin in Belgrade, Micić’s brother Branko
Ve Poljanski in Prague, and Rastko Petrović in Paris.
From the beginning of Zenitism, however, Micić remained
the central figure of the movement. Conflicts with Micićled to
frequent changes in the group’s membership and shifts in the
editorial board of the journal, which Micić edited alone after
May 1922. In January 1923, the Zenitists were forced out of
Zagreb as a result of Micić’s critique of Croatian culture, which
he mocked as a pseudo-Europeanized imitative confection.23
In 1924 the group established a new center in Belgrade, where,
after a hiatus of eight months, the members continued pub-
lishing their journal. They remained active until 1926, when
the group dissolved after the Serbian authorities threatened to
shut it down because of its open embrace of Bolshevik Marx-
ism. During the five years of its existence (1921–26), the group
attracted more than 150 members and collaborators. Among
the collaborators were architects who would later become
prominent in the history of modern architecture, such as
Figure 3 Ljubomir Micić (1895–1971) in 1925 (Vidosava Golubović and
Walter Gropius, El Lissitzky, Theo van Doesburg, Adolf Irina Subotić, eds., Zenit 1921–1926 [Belgrade: Narodna Biblioteka Srbije,
Loos, Erich Mendelsohn, and Vladimir Tatlin.24 2008]; courtesy Irina Subotić).
The Zenitists promoted their work in Serbia and interna-
tionally. In April 1924, they organized The First Zenitist Interna-
tional Exhibition of New Art in Belgrade, and they also presented interested in theater in his formative years, but he went on to
their works at an international exhibition in Bucharest. In 1926, receive a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University
they exhibited at the Moscow show The Revolutionary Art of of Zagreb in 1918. His early interest in theater and philoso-
the West, organized by the State Academy of Art Studies VOKS phy informed his interest in total design, which combined
(All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Coun- architecture, visual arts, industrial and graphic design, theater
tries) (Figure 4). Zenitism was the only avant-garde movement production, poetry, and urban planning, erasing the bound-
in the Balkans with a manifesto and a journal, Zenit, which over aries between these fields.27
the course of five years was published monthly. Micić insisted Micić’s personal background reveals a deep understanding
that authors for the journal should express themselves in their of neo-Byzantine culture and architecture but also divergen-
chosen languages as carriers of identity and culture; thus, Zenit ces from these. While he was a great promoter of architec-
published texts by him and others in a dozen languages, includ- ture, Micić was not a trained architect. He certainly knew
ing Esperanto. Zenit was distributed internationally, reaching about Hagia Sophia, given that he made references to the
beyond Europe to museums and galleries in New York and church in his texts, but the building itself was inaccessible to
San Francisco.25 him, as it was to most Europeans from modest backgrounds.
Ljubomir Micić, the major force behind Zenitism, was a Micić was familiar with Byzantine architecture simply be-
highly controversial figure.26 Born into a modest Serbian cause Byzantine tradition occupied such an important role in
family in Sošice (now part of Croatia) in 1895, Micić was Serbian culture. He was born into a Serbian minority in the

302 JSAH | 75.3 | SEPTEMBER 2016


Croatia-Slavonia region of the Kingdom of Hungary, which
was later incorporated into Croatia. In this poorest region of
the Balkans, known as the Military Frontier, Serbs were
regularly recruited to defend the territories of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire against the Ottoman Empire.28 In this
part of the world, the Western European cultural elite, which
was aligned with Roman Catholic Habsburg culture, consid-
ered impoverished Serbs “a backward and inferior race” and
their Christian Orthodox faith primitive.29 Micić’s opposition
to Western European norms, including neo-Byzantine archi-
tecture, aligned with his attempts to reverse the negative
associations of Byzantium, the Balkans, Orthodox Christianity,
and Slavs with backwardness.30
Micić wrote the main Zenitist manifesto, “Čovek i umet-
nost,” in 1921 and subsequent manifestoes in 1922 and
EVOCATIONS OF BYZANTIUM IN ZENITIST AVANT-GARDE ARCHITECTURE
Figure 4 Zenit displayed at the exhibition
The Revolutionary Art of the West, Moscow,
1926 (Vidosava Golubović and Irina Subotić,
eds., Zenit 1921–1926 [Belgrade: Narodna
Biblioteka Srbije, 2008]; courtesy Irina
Subotić).
1926.31 These antiwar, humanist manifestoes argued for a
new art centered on man and humanity, or what he called
“man-art.”32 By making recurrent references to Christ as an
ideal man and by reversing the major Christian dogma of the
Incarnation of God, Micić proclaimed Zenitism as a new faith
and stated that “man-art” is a Zenitist “theophany,” of which
the only true creator is man himself.33 In 1924, in the first
issue of Zenit published in Belgrade, Micić also wrote “Zeni-
tozofija ili Energetika stvaralačkog zenitizma: No made in
Serbia” (Zenitosophy or energetics of creative Zenitism:
No made in Serbia), which provided a kind of theory of
Zenitist art.34 This radical theory is based not on scholastic
philosophy but on creative energetics, “a synthesis of all
phenomena in the highest and essential forms of life and
worlds.”35 In the first manifesto, Micić had emphasized that
303
one “cannot ‘understand’ Zenitism unless you feel it.”36
By 1924, he defined “man-art” as the essential concept of
Zenitism, as “zenit-art” devoid of superficial symbolism and
aestheticism. Micić presented the ten principles of Zenitism
in the form of the Ten Commandments; the Zenitist second
principle highlights zenith-art as everything related to what
Micić called unspoiled, pure, and vital “barbaric genius”
(barbarogenije).37 In 1926, in “Manifest varvarima duha i misli
na svom kontinentima” (Manifesto to the barbarians of spirit
and thought on all continents), written in the language of the
October Revolution, Micić proclaimed Zenitism a global ar-
tistic movement, a revolution that would “de-civilize” Europe
on the model of barbarogenije.38 Therefore, Micić rejected
any form of traditional and religious authority and pro-
claimed in the Zenitist manifestoes that modern spirituality is
not based on religious faith. Micić advocated for an emotional
and expressive spirituality in Zenitism, a spirituality that was
liberated from colonialist Western European constructs of
civilization. This spirituality could be accessed through the
collective “barbaric genius” that voiced the “new identity cat-
egory [of] a confident and liberated minority culture.”39 As I
will show, this “new primitive” Zenitist agenda related to the
“neo-Byzantine” on ideological, philosophical, and architec-
tural levels.40
Architecture was prominent in the forty-three issues of
the journal Zenit. The Zenitists’ promotion of architecture
evinces their experimentation in the arts and their quest for
creative innovations that facilitated avant-garde discourse.
For example, in 1921, Zenitist Dragan Aleksić published a
Dada-inspired poetic interpretation of Vladimir Tatlin’s
work.41 An article about Tatlin’s Monument to the Third
International (1920) that appeared in the February 1922 issue
of Zenit may have been the first publication of the monument
outside Soviet Russia (Figure 5).42 In 1922 an entire double
issue of the journal edited by El Lissitzky and Ilya Ehrenburg
was dedicated to new Russian art and architecture.43 Subse-
quent issues contained articles on new types of construction,
works by Adolf Loos and Erich Mendelsohn; the Pavillon de
l’Esprit Nouveau, by Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant,
and the Russian pavilion, by Konstantin Melnikov, at the
1925 Decorative Arts Exposition in Paris; the Rosenberg
House, by Theo van Doesburg and Cornelis van Eesteren;
and Van Eesteren’s winning design for the Unter den Linden
in Berlin.44 In 1926, Zenit provided book reviews of eight
Bauhaus publications, including Walter Gropius’s Interna-
tional Architecture, Paul Klee’s Pedagogical Sketchbook, and
László Moholy-Nagy’s Painting, Photography, Film, thus
promoting a holistic approach to architecture and design
not bound by traditional artistic disciplines.45
In 1921, in the fifth issue of Zenit, Micić published a text
by Zenitist Boško Tokin, who wrote from Rome about the
dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica as a paradigmatic example of
304 JSAH | 75.3 | SEPTEMBER 2016
historical architecture of extraordinary impact. Tokin noted
how, given its continual construction and reconstruction over
prolonged periods, the dome could be viewed as simulta-
neously Roman, Byzantine, and Renaissance, an argument
that hinted at the Zenitist position that the “new Byzantine”
style could dissolve traditional historical and geographic divi-
sions.46 Tokin emphasized the way the Byzantine dome com-
bines painting, sculpture, relief, architecture, music, poetry,
and visual poetry. The dome of Saint Peter’s in Rome became
a paradigm for what Byzantine architecture meant to the
Zenitists.47 Micić’s interest in the Byzantine concept of space
manifested in his focus on monumental reinterpretations of
the dome and the wall. For him, the Byzantine dome is a pure
form that should be the “head” of the building.48
In “Beograd bez arhitekture” (Belgrade without architec-
ture), published in the November/December 1925 issue of
Zenit, Micić wrote about the essence of architecture as a
meeting of heaven and earth, referring directly to the philos-
ophy and form of Byzantine architecture as the spirit of the
new architecture. He made clear references to fourteenth-
and fifteenth-century Serbian Byzantine architecture and
painting as the “only monuments of true architecture” and
expanded on his positive assessment of traditional vernacular
and monastic architecture in the Balkans as sources for mod-
ern architecture.49 Micić highlighted what he saw to be the
important spiritual aspects of Byzantine architecture, ideas
presented in the designs for a Zenitist center, the Zeniteum.
Zenitist Reinterpretations of the Byzantine
Dome and Wall
The origins of the Zeniteum cannot be determined with
certainty, but there was a greater emphasis on modern archi-
tecture in the Zenitist journal after the transition to Belgrade
in 1924. Because Micić saw the Zeniteum as both an expres-
sion of and the essence of the Zenitist movement, I would as-
sert that the Zeniteum was originally Micić’s idea. In the spirit
of the Zenitist manifesto’s declaration that “Zenitism is the
idea of all arts,” “beyond dimensions,” and equal to “eter-
nity,” it seems likely that the Zeniteum was a visionary project
and never meant to be built.50 Two diagrammatic drawings
for the Zeniteum were created by the only architect member
of the Zenitist group, Micić’s protégé Jo Klek (born Josif
Seissel, 1904–87).51 Micić published the two designs for the
Zeniteum in Zenit in December 1924, the same year Klek
started his architecture studies at the University of Belgrade
(Figures 6 and 7).52 In architectural form and essence, the
Zeniteum projects relate to the Zenitist programmatic
striving for “man-art” as a “limitless circle that starts nowhere
and ends nowhere” and is “centered in Zenit.”53 The use of
the dome for the Zeniteum reflects this notion of circle and
center and evokes Byzantine solutions. In that regard, both

designs differed from other Zenitist architectural designs and
installations, such as Klek’s design for a Villa Zenit, published
in the October 1925 issue of Zenit (Figure 8).
The designs for the Zeniteum were inspired by central-
ized sacred space, like that found in Byzantine architecture,
but the nonimitative character of Zenitist architecture pre-
cluded the use of more specific references to Byzantine
style.54 Klek’s diagrammatic drawings show the influence of
Byzantine, medieval Romanesque, and ancient Roman ar-
chitecture, which relied on massive, load-bearing masonry
walls and dome structures. The concentric circular drums
EVOCATIONS OF BYZANTIUM IN ZENITIST AVANT-GARDE ARCHITECTURE
Figure 5 Cover page of Zenit, no. 11,
February 1922 (Vidosava Golubović and Irina
Subotić, eds., Zenit 1921–1926 [Belgrade:
Narodna Biblioteka Srbije, 2008]; courtesy
Irina Subotić).
crowned by a dome in the first Zeniteum drawing (see
Figure 6) suggest a reference to the hierarchy of Neopla-
tonic thought, such as that of Dionysius the Areopagite,
whose philosophical thought influenced medieval European
architecture.55 In his 1924 statement of Zenitosophy, Micić
posited the ten principles of creative Zenitism by proclaiming
a new God, “art-man,” and defined Zenitist theory in terms
of hierarchy and symbolism. Zenitism is the “ordering of all
human creation, economy of collective feelings, and synthesis
of all individual forces into a big circle of the whole.”56 The
Zenitist vertical dimension connects earth, sun, and man (the
305
Figure 6 Jo Klek (Josif Seissel), Zeniteum I,
1924 (Zenit, no. 35 [Dec. 1924], n.p., in Zenit
1921–1926, ed. Vidosava Golubović and Irina
Subotić [Belgrade: Narodna Biblioteka Srbije,
2008]; courtesy Irina Subotić).

Figure 7 Jo Klek (Josif Seissel), Zeniteum II,

1924 (Zenit, no. 35 [Dec. 1924], n.p., in Zenit
1921–1926, ed. Vidosava Golubović and Irina
Subotić [Belgrade: Narodna Biblioteka Srbije,
2008]; courtesy Irina Subotić).

new God); it is “a metacosmic triangle, the only Zenitist sym-
bol.”57 As I see it, the pseudo-Byzantine dome of the first
Zeniteum is an expression of the “circle of the whole” that
embraces all individual forces. Its stairs, framed by round
Roman-Byzantine arches, may evoke religious intellectual
and spiritual quests or the pilgrimage steps on Mount Sinai
(Figure 9). The Ladder of Divine Ascent, a seminal Byzantine
text by John Klimakos, may have been another inspiration.58
According to Micić, Zenitism is a magical and electric interval
between the microcosmos and the metacosmos—between
man and the zenith.59 The Zeniteum illustrates “the connec-
tion between earth and heaven, heart with heart, soul with
soul.”60
The second design for the Zeniteum is another interpre-
tation of Zenitist architectonic concepts. It has an axial com-
position of three superimposed, vertically stacked domes of
EVOCATIONS OF BYZANTIUM IN ZENITIST AVANT-GARDE ARCHITECTURE
Figure 8 Jo Klek (Josif Seissel), Villa Zenit,
1924–25, drawing in India ink, pencil, and
watercolor on paper, 39.3 ´ 29.4 cm
(National Museum Belgrade; also published
in Zenit, no. 36 [Oct. 1925], n.p.; photo
courtesy National Museum Belgrade).
diminishing size intersected by vertical and horizontal planes
(see Figure 7). The domes are articulated by rows of arcades.
In this project, a single dome on the very top, without struc-
tural divisions, is superimposed on the structural frame of the
bottom two segments. The cross serves as an organizing prin-
ciple of the entire design, with three domes set in three differ-
ent vertical layers. The attenuated domes of this second
design might have been inspired by Bruno Taut’s 1914
Glass Pavilion (Glashaus) or his visionary architectural draw-
ings for the City Crown (Die Stadtkrone) and the House of
Heaven (Haus des Himmels) in Alpine Architecture (1919)
(Figures 10 and 11).61 Taut’s Glashaus and Stadtkrone
concepts highlighted the use of glass and polychromy in a
search for reconciliation between spirituality and modern ar-
chitecture. Taut returned to the medieval past as a compre-
hensive idealism, with the idea that the Gothic cathedral
307
 Figure 10 Bruno Taut, Glass Pavilion, Deutscher Werkbund Exhibition,
Cologne, 1914 (photo from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Pavilion#/
media/File:Taut_Glass_Pavilion_exterior_1914.jpg).

Figure 9 Pilgrimage steps, Mount Sinai, Egypt (Kurt Weitzmann Archive,

Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University).

provided the highest architectural quality embedded in a

mythic “nonnational” European culture without borders and
governments.62
Rather than modeling Zenitism on the Gothic cathe-
dral, however, Micić advocated reference to a Byzantine
paradigm.63 As Micić postulated in the first issue of Zenit,
the Zeniteum united the immaterial microcosmic and mac-
rocosmic realms and put man in the center of the macro- Figure 11 Bruno Taut, House of Heaven, 1920 (Bruno Taut, Frühlicht,
cosm, echoing the sequential ordering of triplets in the 1920, p. 109).
Byzantine concept of earthly and heavenly hierarchies that
are rooted in Neoplatonic pseudo-Dionysian philosophy.64
Yet Micić despised equally the decadence of European In his critique of Belgrade’s architecture, Micić wrote of
bourgeois culture and the monumental “tasteless” decora- the “Byzantine” space in an unnamed monastery in the
tion of Byzantine churches, an attitude reflected in the two woods near Belgrade, on the fringes of the historical and
designs for the Zeniteum, which did not employ any for- geographic Byzantine reach. In describing this monastery as
mal decorative features of Byzantine churches. He la- a kind of “otherworldly town,” Micić seemed to be opposed
mented, “It is quite rare that [architects] work with the to the prevailing Western European city and its bourgeois
pure arch of the ‘Byzantine’ dome, which could have been and capitalist political economy. Micić claimed that the
very successfully used in contemporary urbanism in recent monastery church “represents a completely purified form:
[modern] architecture.”65 the zenith of architecture!” His description of its simple white

308 JSAH | 75.3 | SEPTEMBER 2016


Figure 12 Rakovica Monastery near Belgrade, Serbia, possibly
fourteenth century, mentioned in text in the sixteenth century (photo
courtesy Ljubomir Milanović).
Figure 13 Rudolf Steiner, Goetheanum I, Dornach, Switzerland, 1913–19
(Benzinger © Rudolf Steiner Archive).
geometrical planes and domes, “devoid of Byzantine-Greek
decoration and tasteless ornamentation,” indicates he was
referring to the Rakovica Monastery, a major spiritual center
(Figure 12).66 This monastery, possibly built in the four-
teenth century, is remarkable for its two domes on drums, a
EVOCATIONS OF BYZANTIUM IN ZENITIST AVANT-GARDE ARCHITECTURE
Figure 14 Rudolf Steiner, Goetheanum I, Dornach, Switzerland, 1913–19,
floor plan and cross section (© Goetheanum Dokumentation).
possible inspiration for domed elements in the visionary proj-
ects for the Zeniteum.
The Zeniteum may also have been inspired by Rudolf
Steiner’s Goetheanum, as the names and design concepts
might suggest (Figure 13).67 Like the Zeniteum, the better-
known Goetheanum borrowed from both avant-garde and
Byzantine architecture. Both projects used large domes and,
in particular, the unusual intersection of several domes. The
first Goetheanum (1913–19) appeared as an axial composition
of two intersecting domes of unequal size (Figure 14).68
Their form resembled the vaulting system of Hagia Sophia,
where the massive central dome is flanked by two smaller
semidomes along the east–west axis, or the two unequally
sized domes of the Church of Archangel Michael in the
twelfth-century monastery Pantokrator (today Zeyrek
Camii) in Istanbul (Figure 15). The first Zeniteum proj-
ect had a massive single, stepped dome, yet the second iter-
ation revealed an experimentation with domical structures
and verticality, with its three attenuated domes stacked on
top of one another.
Jo Klek’s designs for the Zeniteum were never realized.
Another of Klek’s interwar designs, the Church of Saints
Cyril and Methodius in Sušak, Croatia (Figure 16), which
309
Figure 15 Church of Archangel Michael in
the Pantokrator Monastery, Constantinople,
1136, cross section showing the two
intersecting domes (drawing by Heidi
Reburn, delineated after Jean Ebersolt, Les
églises de Constantinople [Paris: E. Leroux,
1913], plate XLIV).
Figure 16 Jo Klek (Josif Seissel), Church of
Saints Cyril and Methodius, Sušak, Croatia,
1931, ground plan (Vesna Mikić, “Zajednički
projekti arhitekata Seissela i Pičmana; uz
Seisselovu skicu ‘Putujući grad’ iz 1932.
godine,” Prostor 18, no. 2 [Dec. 2010],
348–59).
also was never built, followed Zenitist ideas, incorporating
the evocative capacity of Byzantine architecture as Klek did in
the first Zeniteum project (see Figure 6). This centrally
planned church with a massive dome combined what archi-
tectural historian Vesna Mikić has identified as “Interna-
tional” and “Mediterranean” architecture without explicit
references to medieval Byzantine architecture.69 The project
incorporated topographical elements and open terraces,
which also occurred in the design for the second Zeniteum
(see Figure 7). Cyril and Methodius were Byzantine saints and
missionaries who devised the first alphabet for the Slavic
people, which was crucial to their cultural development. In this
design, Klek combined references to the saints and a pedago-
gical mission, advancing its ontological and epistemological
qualities, which were critical to the Zenitist movement.70
In the search for a “nonstereotypical” monumentality in
modern architecture, devoid of academic and historicized
romantic references, Klek’s two designs for the Zeniteum
create architectural monumentality through massive walls
and domes, which is typical of the Byzantine idiom. Both
schemes for the Zeniteum have an undecorated form, puri-
fied of excessive exterior decoration and congruent with
Micić’s appraisal of the white, clear planar surfaces of the
monastery church in Serbia.71 The three-part vertical
organization of the second Zeniteum suggests the triplets
(tripartite ordering) of the Middle Byzantine church,
310 JSAH | 75.3 | SEPTEMBER 2016
topped by a free dome. The round-arched perforations of
the solids suggest permeability and the dynamics of the
structure of medieval walls. What Steiner called “etheric
walls” (spiritual walls) can be seen in the best-preserved ex-
amples of Middle Byzantine architecture, the Greek mon-
astery churches of Hosios Loukas and Daphni.72 The wall
texture of these churches resembles the “etheric walls”
found in Steiner’s first Goetheanum and also in the design
for the second Zeniteum (Figure 17). All have tripartite
geometric and textural organization of surfaces, from a
solid ground level through a porous, “dematerialized”
middle zone crowned by a dome, which Micić highlights as
a pure, spiritual form and the head of the building.73
The triple domes of the second Zeniteum evoke the
three-stepped design process itself, reflecting a Neoplatonic
concept. This concept, also used in Byzantine architecture,
underlies the creation of architecture in a threefold process:
first, an idea forms in the mind of an architect; second, the
idea acquires its form and materialization in the material
world through total design; and third, the idea is ultimately
dematerialized as the beholder moves toward the spiritual
realm through the experience of space. The Byzantines
explained this process in the connection between heaven
and earth; similarly, Micić wrote about a spiritual connec-
tion between earth and heaven through architecture and
urban design.74
Figure 17 Comparative analysis of the tripartite organization of walls. Left: Rudolf Steiner, Goetheanum I, Dornach, Switzerland, 1913–19 (©
Goetheanum Dokumentation). Center: Church of the Mother of God, Hosios Loukas Monastery, Greece, tenth century (author’s photo). Right: Jo Klek
(Josif Seissel), Zeniteum II, 1924 (Zenit, no. 35 [Dec. 1924], n.p., in Zenit 1921–1926, ed. Vidosava Golubović and Irina Subotić [Belgrade: Narodna
Biblioteka Srbije, 2008]; courtesy Irina Subotić).

“dematerialization.” This is evident in the weightless lofti-

Figure 18 El Lissitzky, Proun Space, 1923 (reconstruction 1965; Stedelijk
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, Netherlands).
Structure and Spirituality in Zenitist Architecture
To understand the relationship between Zenitist modernism
and Byzantine architecture, it is important to understand the
role of conceptual design in Zenitist architectural practices. The
unbuilt, visionary project for the second Zeniteum has memora-
ble aesthetics. One of the basic features of Byzantine architec-
ture, as exemplified by Hagia Sophia, is an aesthetics of
ness of Hagia Sophia’s interior space, which is pierced by
numerous windows and topped by a dome with a lower ring
of windows that make the dome appear to be floating in
light, as if suspended from high above (see Figure 1). This
effect is complemented by the lacelike design of visible
structural elements such as columns, usually placed on top
of arches, the most fragile structural parts of the building.75
The second Zeniteum, with its “racked” thin orthogonal
planes on which the domes are “stacked,” defies construc-
tional logic but also reflects the nonmaterial, spiritual qual-
ity of Zenitist architecture.
Zenitist architecture evoked the Byzantine architectural
constructs of total design and dematerialization aesthetics in
diagrammatic visionary drawings. These drawings consis-
tently emphasize the “Byzantine” dichotomy of wall and
dome rather than the trabeated system of Western European
architecture, providing opportunities for altering the prevail-
ing academic architectural canons of the early twentieth
century.76 The subtle evocations of Byzantium in Zenitist
architecture, instead of a rigid adoption of Byzantine archi-
tectural elements, suggest how Micić and Klek moved be-
yond the Byzantine-medieval past in their novel solutions.
The Zenitists also discussed what they termed the “art of
structure” (konstrukcija) and the “architecture of painting,”
which were critical aspects of other modernist movements.77
El Lissitzky’s proun (an acronym from the Russian for “project
for the affirmation of the new”) had a strong influence
on Micić’s philosophy and Klek’s work (Figure 18). Lissitzky

EVOCATIONS OF BYZANTIUM IN ZENITIST AVANT-GARDE ARCHITECTURE 311

Figure 19 El Lissitzky, Construction
[= Proun], 1922 (Zenit, nos. 17/18 [Sept./Oct.
1922], n.p., in Zenit 1921–1926, ed. Vidosava
Golubović and Irina Subotić [Belgrade:
Narodna Biblioteka Srbije, 2008]; courtesy
Irina Subotić).

Figure 20 Jo Klek (Josif Seissel), PaFaMa

[Papier-Farben-Malerei], 1922 (Vidosava
Golubović and Irina Subotić, eds., Zenit 1921–
1926 [Belgrade: Narodna Biblioteka Srbije,
2008]; courtesy Irina Subotić).

and Ilya Ehrenburg published an article on proun in Zenit,
“Ruska nova umetnost” (Russian new art), that was critical
to the wider avant-garde networks of the 1920s and to
Zenitism (Figure 19).78 In their article, Lissitzky and Ehren-
burg traced the development of new Russian art from icon
painting to suprematism and constructivism, from panel paint-
ing to painting in space, and addressed the potential for art
to create a new society on a grand scale.79 With his concept of
arbos (from artija-boja-slika, or paper-color-painting, translated
into German as PaFaMa, from Papier-Farben-Malerei) of 1922,
Micić conceived of painting as constructed of paper and
color, as opposed to romantic mimetic notions of painting
(Figure 20).80 Like Lissitzky’s proun, which Lissitzky defined as
a “construction” (konstrukcija), Micić’s arbos was described as a
construction. Similarly, in the 1920s Micić’s idea of a nonmi-
metic practice shifted from painting to “dematerialized” archi-
tecture, expressed as a composite of all arts (literature, music,
plastic arts, and painting) (see Figures 4 and 20).

312 JSAH | 75.3 | SEPTEMBER 2016


The connections among the avant-gardes in Russia and
Serbia were part of the wide search for new, nonimitative,
socially engaged architecture, as indicated by the member-
ship of the Zenitists in the short-lived Moscow-based Asso-
ciation for New Architecture (ASNOVA), founded in 1923
and dissolved in 1929.81 In 1926, the founders, Nikolai
Ladovsky and El Lissitzky, named Ljubomir Micić as the only
ASNOVA representative from Yugoslavia and the Balkans
among seven activists for the new architecture; the others
were Adolf Behne from Germany, Le Corbusier from
France, Mart Stam from Holland, Lundberg Holm from
the United States, Emil Root from Switzerland, Karel Teige
from Czechoslovakia, and Murayama from Japan.82
Like other avant-garde architectural groups, ASNOVA
was prolific in promoting ideas and visionary architectural
projects, but its members rarely built.83 Led by Ladovsky,
ASNOVA developed a rationalist approach in architecture
based on psychoanalytic methods, emphasizing investigations
of psychological and physiological perceptions of space
through conceptual compositional design and application of
conceptual design to specific architectural projects.84 For
both the Zenitists and members of ASNOVA, space rather
than structure formed the major element in architectural
design. Moreover, ASNOVA insisted on team projects not
based on the traditional master-and-apprentice model of
architectural training, in which students followed their pro-
fessors’ guidance and suppressed their own creativity. This
organization of ASNOVA work paralleled the societal aspira-
tions of the newly formed Soviet Union. By contrast to
ASNOVA’s collectivism, Micić focused on the active social
role of those Zenitist creative accomplishments that promoted
EVOCATIONS OF BYZANTIUM IN ZENITIST AVANT-GARDE ARCHITECTURE
Figure 21 Ljubomir Micić, poster for Great
Zenitist Vespers, Zagreb, 31 January 1923
(Vidosava Golubović and Irina Subotić, eds.,
Zenit 1921–1926 [Belgrade: Narodna
Biblioteka Srbije, 2008]; courtesy Irina
Subotić).
individualism. In his view, the individualism of a Zenitist’s
socially engaged creative process arose from within, not out-
side, the artist. The Zenitists sought to create a society where
humans would be at the center of a microcosmos in which the
highest circles would be art and philosophy.85
Micić insisted that all creation results from both the mys-
tical (spiritual) and the intellectual. By making recurrent and
provocative use of Christological references and employing
terminology usually reserved for the liturgical services of the
Orthodox church, he attempted to combine modernism and
religion within the anti-European primitivism of Zenitist art
and architecture. When Micić scheduled a Zenitist public
performance in Zagreb in January 1923, he called the event
Great Zenitist Vespers, the poster for which featured Tatlin’s
Monument to the Third International and a call for the
Balkanization of Europe (Figure 21).86 By making reference
to the vespers service in Byzantine-rite churches, which glo-
rifies God the creator of the world, Micić similarly glorified
Zenitism as a “new religion” and a “new mysticism.”87 The
Christological references in his polemical texts emerged from
Micić’s consciousness of his Serbian-Byzantine-Orthodox
heritage, but the meaning of his religious references should
be sought in the culture of the Balkans rather than in the
church itself. As a leftist and a Serbian nationalist, Micić em-
braced the spiritual framework of his cultural background,
but he failed to see that Zenitism as a “new religion” was dis-
cordant with modernism.88 Ultimately, his attempts to com-
bine modernism and religion and to promote the Zeniteum
as a kind of new temple were destined for failure. In the end,
even Lissitzky dismissed Zenitism as incompatible with mod-
ernism, which denied any national or religious reference.89
313
Conclusion
Micić’s modernism emerged from his context—the Balkans
and their Byzantine past. In a way typical of the scholarly re-
ception of Balkan culture, Steven A. Mansbach maintains
that Micić’s philosophy of Zenitism is rooted in the native
primitivism of the Balkans and of the Southern Slavs, widely
considered mystical and irrational.90 In academic discourse,
the accomplishments of the Balkans have been perceived as
devoid of culture and history, and thus marginalized in schol-
arly discussions and removed from “canonical” consider-
ation.91 Yet Micić’s Byzantine-modernist connections were
crucially different from those in other parts of Europe. The
Byzantine “archetype” in Zenitist modern architecture was
not an idea meant to be replicated literally; rather, it was in-
tended to evoke the spiritual essence of Byzantine architec-
ture. Micić’s resistance to Western European colonization of
Eastern Europe—its “close other” in Piotr Piotrowski’s
terms—took the form of a turn to the architecture closely as-
sociated with Byzantium.92
For Micić, Slavs were the barbarogenije (the barbaric genius)
who resisted the “cultivation” imposed by others and thus pre-
served an uncorrupted “self” and spirituality beyond their in-
tellectual, ideological, and socioeconomic realities.93 In his
view, barbarogenije could be a vehicle of new art and spirituality
in the “sixth continent,” the Balkans.94 As explained by Igor
Marjanović, growing up on the impoverished Military Fron-
tier, surviving World War I, persecuted by the authorities in
the 1920s in both Croatia and Serbia, and thus displaced from
any obvious homeland, Micić evoked barbarogenije as a creative
space removed from traditional narratives and academic crea-
tive disciplines.95 At the same time, barbarogenije was the
avant-garde voice of the Zenitists and Serbs, who denounced
Europe, its tyranny, its colonization, and its geographic bor-
ders. In the last issue of Zenit, published in 1926, just before the
journal was shut down by the government, Micić wrote:
“Down with Europe! Down with today’s tyranny; down with
the exploitation of man over man; down with state borders.”96
Europe, he stated, was the “synonym for greedy capitalism and
imperialism of the West (and therefore it also includes Amer-
ica).”97 Europe was provoking the collapse of humanity, while
the barbarians represented “the entire world proletariat.”98 He
described barbarogenije as the “sum of eternal, brutal forces,
which rejuvenates humanity.”99 In a note, Micić added that
“Zenitism is a son of the awakened Serbian genius.”100 In
this last issue of Zenit, he clearly stated that the “Balkanization
of Europe” was not a fight against culture but a fight for a
“new culture.”101 Micić asserted that Zenitists recognized bar-
barogenije in the vitality of the Asian and Balkan people and that
the “Balkanization of Europe” should be understood as the
“barbarization of Europe” through barbarogenije. Micić’s Zeni-
tist fight for the “Balkanization of Europe” in the 1920s argued
314 JSAH | 75.3 | SEPTEMBER 2016
for the equal cultural treatment of Western Europe and its
“close other” in the Balkans.102
In Zenitist architecture, Byzantine tradition and modern-
ist avant-garde were intertwined in a way that defied the
boundaries between modernity and tradition. By combining
the spirit of “Byzantine” essence, El Lissitzky’s proun, and
Klek’s arbos, Micić and the Zenitists created a diachronic cul-
tural hybridization of “true newness” where everything came
together: space, time, and society. They intended to break
from historical and geographic systematization in order to
create an architecture resulting from ontological creative
processes. Zenitist “neo-Byzantine” provided a platform for
the transition from Eurocentric modernism to Zenitism.
Far from the historicist neo-Byzantine architectural style
that originated in Vienna, Zenitism used evocations of the
Byzantine to create a unique and dynamic Byzantine-modernist
architecture.
Jelena Bogdanovićć, coeditor of Political Landscapes of Capital Cities
(Colorado University Press, 2016) and On the Very Edge: Modernism
and Modernity in the Arts and Architecture of Interwar Serbia (1918–
1941) (Leuven University Press, 2014), specializes in Byzantine,
Slavic, Western European, and Islamic architecture in the Balkans
and the Mediterranean. jelenab@iastate.edu; bogdanovicjelena@
gmail.com
Notes
1. This article results from my long-term interest in Byzantine architecture
and its relevance to modern and contemporary architectural practices. Vari-
ous versions of this research were presented at the 2012 Yale conference
“Byzantium/Modernism,” at the School of Design at Iowa State University
in fall 2012, and at the 2013 convention of the Association for Slavic, East
European, and Euroasian Studies, held in Boston. I am immensely grateful
to JSAH editor Pat Morton and to the reviewers for their suggestions and
questions that helped me improve this essay. Thanks are also due to Miloš
R. Perović, Aleksandar Kadijević, Thomas Leslie, April Eisman, Kurt Forster,
Ljubomir Milanović, Marina Mihaljević, Irina Subotić, Tanja Damljanović-
Conley, Erin Kalish, Lilien Filipovitch Robinson, Ljubica D. Popovich, Elena
Konstantinovna Murenina, Elena Boeck, Anna Sokolina, Maria Taroutina,
Jane Sharp, Mikesch Muecke, Ulrike Passe, Karen Bermann, Kimberly Zar-
ecor, Matthew Gordy, Heidi Reburn, Joyce Newman, Trudy Jacoby, Anna
Pauli, Danielle Peltakian, Gordana Stanišić, Dragana Ćorović, and Dušan
Danilović. This research was supported by a grant from the Center for Excel-
lence in Arts and Humanities at Iowa State University.
On tradition and modernism, see Leen Meganck, Linda van Santvoort,
and Jan de Maeyer, eds., Regionalism and Modernity: Architecture in Western
Europe 1914–1940 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2013); Richard Etlin,
Modernism in Italian Architecture, 1890–1940 (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1991), 165–376; Michelangelo Sabatino, Pride in Modesty: Modernist Architec-
ture and the Vernacular Tradition in Italy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
2010), 57–127.
2. On the early interest in Byzantine architecture, see Auguste Choisy, L’art de
bâtir chez les Byzantins (Paris: Société anonyme de publications périodiques,
1883); Auguste Choisy, Histoire de l’architecture, 2 vols. (Paris: Gauthier-
Villars, 1899); Josef Strzygowski, Kleinasien, ein Neuland der Kunstgeschichte
(Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1903).
3. J. B. Bullen, Byzantium Rediscovered: The Byzantine Revival in Europe and
America (London: Phaidon, 2003).
4. Ibid., 8.
5. Ibid., 58–59. See also Neil Levine, “The Romantic Idea of Architectural
Legibility: Henri Labrouste and the Neo-Grec,” in The Architecture of the
Ecole des Beaux-Arts, ed. Arthur Drexler (New York: Museum of Modern
Art/Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977), 332.
6. From the seventeenth century in Western Europe, Byzantium was consid-
ered an avatar of the Roman Empire rather than a historical reality. Jean-
Michele Spieser, “Du Cange and Byzantium,” in Through the Looking Glass:
Byzantium through British Eyes, ed. Robin Cormack and Elizabeth Jeffreys
(Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2000), 199–210; Bullen, Byzantium Rediscov-
ered, 11; Ludovic Bender, “Regards sur Sainte-Sophie (fin XVIIe–début XIXe
siècle): Prémices d’une histoire de l’architecture byzantine,” Byzantinische
Zeitschrift 105, no. 1 (2012), 1–28.
7. In 1929 this kingdom became the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1929–45).
8. Renate Wagner-Rieger, Der Architekt Theophil Hansen (Vienna: Österreichi-
sche Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1977); Sussane Kronblicher-Skacha, “Archi-
tektur,” in Das Zeitalter Kaiser Franz Josephs I (Vienna: Niederösterreichisches
Landesmuseum, 1984), esp. 491; Ákos Moravánszky, Competing Visions: Aesthetic
Invention and Social Imagination in Central European Architecture, 1867–1918
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1998), 63–70; Bullen, Byzantium Rediscovered,
46–49.
9. Miodrag Jovanović, “Teofil Hanzen, ‘hanzenatika’ i Hanzenovi srpski
učenici” [summary in French: “Théophile Hansen, la ‘Hansenatique’ et les
disciples Serbes de Hansen”] [Theophil Hansen, the “Hanseatic” and Hansen
Serbs disciples], Zbornik za likovne umetnosti matice srpske 21 (1985), 235–56.
Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
10. Aleksandar Kadijević, Jedan vek traženja nacionalnog stila u srpskoj arhitek-
turi (sredina XIX–XX veka) [One century of searching for a national style in
Serbian architecture (mid-nineteenth–twentieth centuries)], 2nd ed. (Bel-
grade: Gradjevinska Knjiga, 2007).
11. Carl Schorske, Thinking with History: Explorations in the Passage to Modern-
ism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998). See also Mora-
vánszky, Competing Visions.
12. Starting with the formation of the Serbian medieval state, the Serbs re-
ceived from Byzantium the Cyrillic alphabet, state organization and philosophy
of the state law, arts and literature, and Christian Orthodox religion, while
Serbian church architecture was based on Byzantine models. Serbo-Byzantine
style hence became an official style of the new state. Kadijević, Jedan vek
trazenja; Branislav Pantelić, “Nationalism and Architecture: The Creation of
a National Style in Serbian Architecture and Its Political Implications,” JSAH
56, no. 1 (Mar. 1997), 16–41. Tanja Damljanović demonstrates that a variety of
modernist expressions in architecture do not support a national distinctiveness
of either Serbian or Yugoslav architecture. Tanja Damljanović, “The Question
of National Architecture in Interwar Yugoslavia: Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana”
(PhD diss., Cornell University, 2003). Aleksandar Ignjatović claims that mod-
ernist architecture in the interwar period was an active and constitutive part of
representing and materializing the national idea of Yugoslavism. Aleksandar
Ignjatović, Jugoslovenstvo u arhitekturi 1904–1941 [Yugoslavism in architecture
1904–1941] (Belgrade: Gradjevinska Knjiga, 2007).
13. Aleksandar Kadijević, “Evokacije i parafraze vizantijskog graditeljstva u
srpskoj arhitekturi od 1918. do 1941. godine” [summary in English: “Byzantine
Construction Evocations and Paraphrases in Serbian Architecture from 1918
to 1941”], in Niš and Byzantium II, ed. Miša Rakocija (Niš: Prosveta, 2004),
381–94, esp. 388, 389, 391.
14. In 1883, Mihajlo Valtrović, architect and professor of archaeology at the
University of Belgrade, founded the Serbian Archaeological Society, which
documented archaeological remains in Serbia, including medieval heritage.
Tanja Damljanović, Valtrović i Milutinović, 3 vols. (Belgrade: Istorijski Muzej
Srbije, 2006–8).
EVOCATIONS OF BYZANTIUM IN ZENITIST AVANT-GARDE ARCHITECTURE
15. Kadijević, “Evokacije i parafraze vizantijskog,” esp. 386.
16. On studies of Byzantine architecture in Serbia and trips to Saint Mark’s in
Venice and other locations in Italy, see Branko Maksimović, “Od studentskih
dana do trnovitih staza urbanizma Beograda” [From students’ days to thorny
paths of the Belgrade urbanism], in Beograd u sećanjima 1919–1929 [Belgrade
in memories 1919–1929], ed. Milan Djoković (Belgrade: Srpska Književna
Zadruga, 1980), 41–56, esp. 43, 47.
17. The first International Congress of Byzantine Studies was held in
Romania in 1924. The founders of the Association International des Études
Byzantines (AIEB) included French, Romanian, Russian, and British scholars
C. Diehl, H. Gregoire, N. Iorga, N. Kondakov, G. Millet, and Sir W. Ramsay.
18. Miloš R. Perović, Srpska arhitektura XX veka: Od istoricisma do drugog
modernizma/Serbian 20th Century Architecture: From Historicism to Second
Modernism (Belgrade: Arhitektonski Fakultet Univerziteta u Beogradu, 2003),
69–70.
19. Janez Vrečko, Srečko Kosovel, Slovenska zgodovinska avantgarda in Zenitizem
(Maribor: Založba Obzorja, 1986); Vidosava Golubović and Irina Subotić,
eds., Zenit 1921–1926 (Belgrade: Narodna Biblioteka Srbije, 2008).
20. Vidosava Golubović, “Časopis Zenit (1921–1926)” [The Zenit periodical
(1921–1926)], in Golubović and Subotić, Zenit 1921–1926, 15–44, esp. 15;
“Biografije saradnika zenita” [Biographies of Zenitist collaborators], s.v.
“Ljubomir Micić,” in Golubović and Subotić, Zenit 1921–1926, 345–50.
21. Ljubomir Micić, “Čovek i umetnost” [Man and art], Zenit, no. 1 (Feb.
1921), 1–2.
22. Golubović and Subotić, Zenit 1921–1926, 11–12, English translation on
469–70.
23. Laurel Seely Voloder and Tyrus Miller, “Avant-Garde Periodicals
in the Yugoslavian Crucible: Zenit (Zagreb 1921–3, Belgrade 1924–6);
Zagreb: Dada-Jok (1922), Dada-Tank (1922), Dada Jazz (1922); Novi
Sad: Út (1922–5); Ljubljana: Svetokret (1921); Rdeči pilot (1922); and Tank
(1927),” in The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Maga-
zines, vol. 3, Europe 1880–1940, pt. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2013), 1105.
24. “Biografije saradnika zenita,” 289–384.
25. Ljubomir Micić, “Nova umetnost” [New art], Zenit, no. 35 (Dec. 1924), n.p.
26. Golubović, “Časopis Zenit (1921–1926),” 15–44, esp. 15; “Biografije sar-
adnika zenita,” s.v. “Ljubomir Micić.”
27. Golubović and Subotić, Zenit 1921–1926; Igor Marjanović, “Zenit: Peripa-
tetic Discourses of Ljubomir Micić and Branko Ve Poljanski,” in On the Very
Edge: Modernism and Modernity in the Arts and Architecture of Interwar Serbia
(1918–1941), ed. Jelena Bogdanović, Lilien Filipovitch Robinson, and Igor
Marjanović (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2014), 63–84.
28. Marjanović, “Zenit,” 66.
29. Ibid. See also Jasminka Udovički, “The Bonds and the Fault Lines,” in Burn
This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia, ed. Jasminka Udovički and
James Ridgeway (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 11–42.
30. Marjanović, “Zenit,” 72.
31. Micić, “Čovek i umetnost”; Ljubomir Micić, Boško Tokin, and Ivan Goll,
Manifest Zenitizma [The Zenitist manifesto] (Zagreb: Biblioteka Zenit, 1921).
Later, Micić published “Zenit Manifest,” Zenit, no. 11 (Feb. 1922), 1; and
“Manifest varvarima duha i misli na svom kontinentima” [Manifesto to the
barbarians of spirit and thought on all continents], Zenit, no. 38 (Jan./Feb.
1926), n.p. On the Zenitists’ programmatic texts—manifestoes, poems, and
dramatic texts—see Voloder and Miller, “Avant-Garde Periodicals.” For the
English translation of the manifesto from the book Manifest Zenitisma, see
Ljubomir Micić, “Zenitist Manifesto,” in Impossible Histories: Historic Avant-
Gardes, Neo-Avant-Gardes, and Post-Avant-Gardes in Yugoslavia, 1918–1991,
ed. Dubravka Djurić and Miško Šuvaković (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
2003), 525–31.
32. Micić, “Čovek i umetnost.”
33. Ibid. Theophany is the manifestation of God to man.
315
34. Ljubomir Micić, “Zenitozofija ili Energetika stvaralačkog zenitizma: No
made in Serbia” [Zenitosophy or energetics of creative Zenitism: No made in
Serbia], Zenit, nos. 26–33 (Oct. 1924), n.p.
35. Ibid.
36. Micić et al., Manifest Zenitizma, 1, English translation in Micić, “Zenitist
Manifesto,” 525.
37. Micić, “Zenitozofija,” n.p.
38. Micić, “Manifest varvarima,” n.p.
39. Ljubomir Micić, Barbarogenie le decivilizateur (Paris: Aux Arenes de
Lutece, 1938); Marjanović, “Zenit,” 69.
40. Miloš R. Perović has demonstrated that Zenitism was the only movement
in the Balkans that had all the attributes of the avant-garde as defined by phi-
losopher Stefan Morawski. Miloš R. Perović, “Zenitism and Modernist Archi-
tecture,” in Bogdanović et al., On the Very Edge, 85–96. See Stefan Morawski,
“On the Avant-Garde, Neo-Avant-Garde and the Case of Postmodernism,”
Literary Studies in Poland 21 (1988), 81–106.
41. Dragan Aleksić, “Tatlin. HP/s + Čovek,” Zenit, no. 9 (Nov. 1921), 8–9.
42. Cover page of Zenit, no. 11 (Feb. 1922); El Lissitzky and Ilya Ehrenburg,
“Ruska nova umetnost” [Russian new art], Zenit, nos. 17/18 (Sept./Oct. 1922),
52. See also Perović, “Zenitism and Modernist Architecture,” esp. 91;
Marjanović, “Zenit,” esp. 67. Svetlana Boym claims that the first publication
of Tatlin’s Monument to the Third International was in the Munich art mag-
azine Der Ararat. Svetlana Boym, Architecture of the Off-Modern (New York:
Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), 11.
43. Lissitzky and Ehrenburg, “Ruska nova umetnost.”
44. Architect P. T., “Novi sistem gradjenja” [New system of construction], Zenit,
no. 34 (Nov. 1924), n.p. This issue also includes photographs of Adolf Loos’s
model of the Baker house in Paris and the Einstein tower by Erich Mendelsohn.
Branko Ve Poljanski provides a discussion of the Pavillon de l’Esprit Nouveau
and Melnikov’s Russian pavilion in “ ‘Mi’ na dekorativnoj izložbi u Parizu” [“We”
at the Decorative Arts Exposition in Paris], Zenit, no. 37 (Nov./Dec. 1925), n.p.
Finally, yet another critical text on international modernist architecture is Walter
Gropius’s “Internacionalna arhitektura” [International architecture], Zenit,
no. 40 (Apr. 1926), n.p.; this article features an illustration of the Rosenberg
House, an image repeated on the issue’s cover page. The same issue also
shows Van Eesteren’s first-prize-winning design for the Unter den Linden.
See also Perović, “Zenitism and Modernist Architecture.”
45. “Knjige Bauhaus-a” [The Bauhaus books], Zenit, no. 40 (Apr. 1926), n.p.
46. Boško Tokin, “Rim/Kupola Svetog Petra” [Rome/The dome of Saint
Peter’s], Zenit, no. 5 (June 1921), 3–4.
47. See also Kadijević, “Evokacije i parafraze vizantijskog,” esp. 388, 389, 391.
48. Ljubomir Micić, “Beograd bez arhitekture” [Belgrade without architec-
ture], Zenit, no. 37 (Nov./Dec. 1925), n.p.
49. Ibid. For references to primary sources that describe Hagia Sophia as the
meeting of heaven and earth, see Linda Safran, “Introduction,” in Heaven on
Earth: Art and the Church in Byzantium, ed. Linda Safran (University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 1, 11.
50. Micić et al., Manifest Zenitizma, English translation in Micić, “Zenitist
Manifesto,” 529.
51. On Seissel, see “Biografije saradnika zenita,” s.v. “Jo, Josif Klek,” 329–30.
52. Jo Klek remained closely associated with Zenitism until its dissolution in
1926. In the last issue of Zenit, Ljubomir Micić, writing under the name
Dr. M. Rasinov, published “Zenitizam kroz prizmu marksizma” [Zenitism
through the prism of Marxism], Zenit, no. 43 (Dec. 1926), 12.
53. Micić, “Čovek i umetnost,” 1.
54. Micić, “Nova umetnost”; Esther Levinger, “Ljubomir Micić and the Zeni-
tist Utopia,” in Central European Avant-Gardes: Exchange and Transformation,
1910–1930, ed. Timothy O. Benson (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002),
260–78. Art historian Katherine Ann Carl associates the Zeniteum with
Egyptian funerary architecture because of the Zeniteum’s massive circular
walls topped by a dome with tumuli-like architecture and its thick walls.
316 JSAH | 75.3 | SEPTEMBER 2016
Katherine Ann Carl, “Aoristic Avant-Garde: Experimental Art in 1960s and
1970s Yugoslavia” (PhD diss., Stony Brook University, 2009), 7. In my opin-
ion, the lack of windows in the design does not necessarily suggest mortuary
architecture.
55. Jelena Bogdanović, “Rethinking the Dionysian Legacy in Medieval Archi-
tecture: East and West,” in Dionysius the Areopagite between Orthodoxy and Her-
esy, ed. Filip Ivanović (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011),
109–34, esp. 119–24, 130–32.
56. Micić, “Zenitozofija,” n.p.
57. Ibid.
58. Dimitrije Bogdanović, Jovan Lestvičnik u vizantijskoj i staroj srpskoj
književnosti [John Klimakos in Byzantine and medieval Serbian literature] (Banja
Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina: Romanov, 2008), 1–5.
59. Micić et al., Manifest Zenitizma, English translation in Micić, “Zenitist
Manifesto,” 529.
60. Micić, “Nova umetnost,” n.p.
61. Bruno Taut, Alpine Architektur (Hagen: Folkwang-Verlag, 1919). I thank
Tanja Conley and Patricia Morton for discussing with me Taut’s architecture
and the reference.
62. Alexander Nagel, Medieval Modern: Art out of Time (New York: Thames
and Hudson, 2012), 7–21, 241–48, 268; Iain Boyd White, Bruno Taut and the
Architecture of Activism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982),
29–48; Richard Weston, Plans, Sections and Elevations: Key Buildings of the Twen-
tieth Century (London: Laurence King, 2004), 40. On polychromy in architec-
ture, see Peter Collins, Changing Ideals in Modern Architecture, 1750–1950, 2nd
ed. (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1998), 111–16, 274–79, 283–84.
63. For the pseudo-Gothic font used on the covers of Zenit, see Zenit, no. 1
(Feb. 1921) and several subsequent issues; for prominently used Cyrillic font,
see Zenit, nos. 26–33 (Oct. 1924).
64. Micić, “Čovek i umetnost”; Bogdanović, “Rethinking the Dionysian Legacy.”
65. Micić, “Beograd bez arhitekture,” n.p.
66. Ibid.
67. Perović, Srpska arhitektura XX veka, 66–70. Rudolf Steiner was the
founder of anthroposophy, which had its center at the Goetheanum. See, for
example, Anna P. Sokolina, ed., Arhitektura i antroposofiya [Architecture and
anthroposophy] (Moscow: KMK, 2010), summary in English, 261–64; Willy
Rotzler, “Das Goetheanum in Dornach als Beispiel der Integration der
Ku:: nste,” in Rudolf Steiner in Kunst und Architektur, ed. Walter Kugler and
Simon Baus (Cologne: Dumont, 2007), 291–98; David Adams, “Rudolf
Steiner’s First Goetheanum as an Illustration of Organic Functionalism,”
JSAH 51, no. 2 (June 1992), 182–204.
68. The first Goetheanum, fully completed under Steiner, was lost to fire in
1923. The still extant second Goetheanum was built posthumously. On the
architectural idea of the Goetheanum, see Rudolf Steiner, Der Baugedanke des
Goetheanum: Einleitender Vortag mit Erklärungen zu den Bildern des Baus
(Dornach, Switzerland: Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag am Goe-
theanum, 1932), 19–26.
69. Vesna Mikić, “Zajednički projekti arhitekata Seissela i Pičmana; uz Seisse-
lovu skicu ‘Putujući grad’ iz 1932. godine” [Joint projects of architects Seissel
and Pičman, accompanied by Seissel’s drawing Traveling City], Prostor 18, no. 2
(Dec. 2010), 348–59, esp. 353. I thank Aleksandar Kadijević for discussing
with me the church in Sušak.
70. After World War II, when Klek took a position as professor of architecture
in Zagreb, he became a practitioner of rigidly orthogonal international modern-
ist architecture. He did not continue to experiment with Byzantine-modernist
paradigms or refer to his formative years in the Zenitist movement under the
strong influence of Micić. “Biografije saradnika zenita,” s.v. “Jo, Josif Klek.”
71. On the demands for purity of form, color, and space and the first Zenitist
project, see Micić, “Nova umetnost.” On the austere monastic architecture in
the Balkans “purified” of the excessive decoration of Byzantine architecture,
see Micić, “Beograd bez arhitekture.”
72. See, for example, Slobodan Ćurčić, Architecture in the Balkans: From Dio-
::
cletian to Suleyman the Magnificent (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
2010), 297–300, 383–90, 435–36, 472, 478. Baron von Hansen’s drawings of
Hosios Loukas had been published in Allgemeine Bauzeitung in 1853; see
Wagner-Rieger, Der Architekt Theophil Hansen, 266, as cited in Jovanović,
“Teofil Hanzen,” 244. Other publications were also available by this time; for
example, Robert W. Schultz and Sidney H. Barnsley, The Monastery of Saint
Luke (London: Macmillan, 1901).
73. Micić, “Beograd bez arhitekture.”
74. Micić, “Nova umetnost.”
75. Ćurčić, Architecture in the Balkans, 196–98.
76. See, for example, Fil Hearn, Ideas That Shaped Buildings (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 2003), 97–135; Colin Davies, “Representation,” in Think-
ing about Architecture: An Introduction to Architectural Theory (London:
Laurence King, 2011), 12–23; Joseph Rykwert, Dancing Column: On Order in
Architecture (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996).
77. Micić wrote about the “structure of poems” and “words in space” and
addressed these comparative notions in architecture. Ljubomir Micić, “Kate-
gorički imperativ zenitističke pesničke škole” [Categorical imperative of the
Zenitist poet’s school], Zenit, no. 13 (Apr. 1922), 17–18. See also Lajos Kassák,
“Arhitektura slike” [Architecture of painting], trans. Ljubomir Micić, Zenit,
nos. 19/20 (Nov./Dec. 1922), 67.
78. Lissitzky and Ehrenburg, “Ruska nova umetnost,” 50–52.
79. Ibid. See also K. Malevič, “Zakoni nove umetnosti” [The rules of new art],
Zenit, nos. 17/18 (Sept./Oct. 1922), 53–54. Also in this issue of Zenit,
Lissitzky’s image titled Konstrukcija (another word he used for proun) appears
(see Figure 19).
80. Micić, “Nova umetnost.”
81. Nikolai Ladovsky and El Lissitzky, from ASNOVA: Review of the Associa-
tion of New Architects (1926), in Architectural Theory, vol. 2, An Anthology from
1871–2005, ed. Harry Francis Mallgrave and Christina Contandriopoulos
(Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2008), 178–79; Selim O. Khan-Magomedov, Pio-
neers of Soviet Architecture: The Search for New Solutions in the 1920s and 1930s
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1987), 106–45.
82. Ladovsky and Lissitzky, from ASNOVA; Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of
Soviet Architecture. Micić’s specific role in ASNOVA remains unknown.
83. Ladovsky and Lissitzky, from ASNOVA; Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of
Soviet Architecture. See also Catherine Cooke, Russian Avant-Garde: Theories of
Art, Architecture and the City (London: Academy Editions, 1995), 25–98.
84. Khan-Magomedov, Pioneers of Soviet Architecture, 106–45.
85. Micić, “Čovek i umetnost.”
86. Ljubomir Micić, poster for Velika Zenitistička Večernja (Great Zenitist
Vespers), Zagreb, 31 Jan. 1923.
87. Micić, “Čovek i umetnost.”
88. Micić never repudiated his Serbian identity; he initiated a nationalistic
journal, Srbijanstvo, in 1940. Ljubomir Micić, “Manifest Srbijanstva” [Mani-
festo of Serbianism], Dubrovnik 1936, Srbijanstvo, Belgrade, 1940, reprinted
EVOCATIONS OF BYZANTIUM IN ZENITIST AVANT-GARDE ARCHITECTURE
in Daj nam Bože municije: Srpska avangarda na braniku otadžbine, ed. Nikola
Marinković (Belgrade: Dinex, 2013), 111–29.
89. Levinger, “Ljubomir Micić.” Ultimately, Micić was abandoned by his left-
ist fellows in Tito’s Yugoslavia, where he lived on charity. “Biografije sarad-
nika zenita,” s.v. “Ljubomir Micić.”
90. S. A. Mansbach, Modern Art in Eastern Europe: From the Baltic to the Bal-
kans, ca. 1890–1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 231. On
Mansbach’s study of Zenitism see also Perović, “Zenitism and Modernist
Architecture.”
91. Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009); Bullen, Byzantium Rediscovered, 16–18, 110, 115, 168, 226–27; Robert
S. Nelson, “Living on the Byzantine Borders of Western Art,” Gesta 35, no. 1
(1996), 3–11; Nenad Makuljević, “The Political Reception of the Vienna
School: Josef Strzygowski and Serbian Art History,” Journal of Art Historiog-
raphy 8 (June 2013), 1–13.
92. For Piotrowski, the “close other” refers to “Eastern Europe” despite the
fact that the region’s architecture and arts developed in parallel to Western
European traditions. In that context, the “close other” is not the “real other,”
as in Southeast Asia or Africa, but its culture remains marginalized. Piotr
Piotrowski, “On the Spatial Turn, or Horizontal Art History,” Umeni/Art
5 (2008), 378–83, reprinted as shorter versions “Towards Horizontal Art
History,” in Crossing Cultures: Conflict, Migration, and Convergence, ed. Jaynie
Anderson (Melbourne: Miegunyah Press, 2009), 82–85; and “Toward a
Horizontal History of the European Avant-Garde,” in Europa! Europa? The
Avant-Garde, Modernism and the Fate of a Continent, ed. Sascha Bru, Jan
Baetens, Benedikt Hjartarson, Peter Nicholls, Tania Ørum, and Hubert van
den Berg (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), 49–58. See also Jelena Bogdanović, “On
the Very Edge: Modernisms and Modernity of Interwar Serbia,” in
Bogdanović et al., On the Very Edge, 1–29.
93. Micić, “Zenit Manifest,” 1.
94. Ljubomir Micić, “Makroskop: Pet kontinenata” [Macroscope: Five conti-
nents], Zenit, no. 24 (May 1923), n.p.; Lioubomir Mitzitch, “Avion sans appa-
reil: Poème antieuropéen,” Zenit, no. 37 (Nov./Dec. 1925), n.p.
95. Marjanović, “Zenit,” esp. 80–81.
96. Micić, “Zenitizam kroz prizmu marksizma,” 12–13.
97. Ibid., 12.
98. Ibid., 13.
99. Ibid.
100. Ibid., 12. See scanned documents from Micić’s personal archive in the
Belgrade National Library online: http://monoskop.org/images/5/51/
Zenit_43.pdf (accessed 7 June 2015). The documents are also available on
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToNy08rJphM (accessed 7 June
2015).
101. Micić, “Zenitizam kroz prizmu marksizma,” 13.
102. Micić, poster for Velika Zenitistička Večernja. See also Delphine Bière-
Chauvel, “La revue Zenit: Une avant-garde entre particularisme identitaire et
internationalisme,” in Bru et al., Europa! Europa?, 138–52.
317