The highest principle is floating above life, because life is poured out of it.

(Leonid Sejka)

Mediala from a cultural, historical and sociological point of view started at a time when new, modernist tendencies increasingly entered the art scene: abstract painting, Enformel and expressionist forms of artistic expression. Mediala reacted rebelliously, promoting the return to the old values, the Renaissance, but in a new modern spirit, with a note of mysticism and personal artistic expression of each of its members.

The founder of the group was Leonid Sejka, followed by Miro Glavurtic, architect Vukot Tupa Vukotic, Milic od Macve, Sinisa Vukovic, Dado Djuric, Uros Toskovic, Vladan Radovanovic, and the only woman in the group, Olja Ivanjicki. These artists are the supporters of the restoration of real values. At the same time, the Mediala combines traditional and experimental, all with a certain note of personality, by which each of the artists endeavors to express his subjective attitude, remaining faithful to the basic principles. There are no established forms and principles, but the role of art in the society and the world that connects them is precisely determined. The starting point of the Mediala is based on the struggle of the opposites, Med and Ale. Med as an association to something delicious, and on the other side Ale as a monster or ghost that lurks and carries evil in itself. The combination of these two words is basically the starting point for the artistic creations of Mediala members, and Mediala itself as a movement developed on the contrary of the attitudes it represented.

Moved by dissatisfaction and revolt, Mediala brought together a group of young artists whose main goal was to search for a unique formula of artistic expression, and as a form of resistance to the fear of change and to the monotony that prevailed at the time these young artists broke into the scene. Mediala become a group that today the art historians, sociologists and culturologists have interpreted as an avant-garde association of artists who, in their own way, laid the foundations of a visionary and thoughtful art that has its own principles and, as such, represented artistic rebellion in the culture of the second half of the 20th century in Yugoslavia. Mediala gathered artists with similar views and ways of thinking. They were like a family, exchanging opinions. The family slowly increased over time.

Members of Mediala were not just painters. There were sculptors, poets, architects etc, in one word bohemians, who together spread their beliefs of Med and Ale, developing their opinion regarding Mediala movement, which was theoretically elaborated by the founder Leonid Sejka.

Mediala was a movement in art that opposed modernism and as such did not fit into new artistic tendencies, therefore, at the time it appeared, it was not well accepted. The members of this group created and spread their ideas in anonymously. The first exhibition of Mediala was in 1958. The movement represented opinions and experiences of the following artists: Olja Ivanjicki, Leonid Sejka, Miro Glavurtic and Vladan Radovanovic, who were brave enough to speak publicly and express their opinions and exhibit their art. This was very brave because the public was not in favor of such innovations. Their views were presented in the Mediala magazine. The first and only copy of the magazine was published in 1959, illustrated by the drawings of Miro Glavurtic, and there were handwritten views of the members, artists, painters and theorists as well as their explanation of the art they create. The following principle describes how brave and daring their art was: "We rode on tigers, if we fell, the tigers would eat us”, by Miro Glavurtic.

Nowadays, thanks to Mediala, the artists that "ride tigers” are the artists that are eager to search in the field of art, following the path of their predecessors. Through mystical world, they achieve a new reality of performances and figures that each have a distinctive seal of personal and unique. Among them are artists of middle, but also a very young generation of artists who already shown and proved in the domestic and international art scene.

Their paintings represent journey through time and space of the universe with the mission of discovering the real and the imaginary. Through the game of light, shadows and refined sense of color, they transform their vision into art pieces that can undoubtedly keep pace with those by whom they have been taught.

Curator of the exhibition and the author of the text Senka Subotic, MA.