ECHOES OF MODERNITY: ART TENDENCIES DURING THE INTERWAR PERIOD AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON PEDAGOGICAL APPROACHES IN ART SCHOOLS

Abstract

While modernist schools in the field of art and design developed in parallel worldwide between the two World Wars, in Serbia, political and social circumstances diverted attention to different needs. Artists were mostly educated abroad, in cities like Paris, Munich, Prague, or Budapest, often in order to return to the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with the acquired experience and knowledge, bringing ideas changed through a personal prism. Avant-garde artistic ideas and styles appeared on the territory of today’s Serbia between the two World Wars, but were altered under the influence of the prevailing and generally accepted traditionalism, which ruled art educational institutions as much as the society at large. The sociological and intellectual characteristics of society largely determine the dominant form of aesthetic consciousness, and the acceptance or non-acceptance of certain art forms greatly influenced the stylistic picture of the epoch. During that time, the evolution of art education was dynamic, but the same cannot be said of the development of learning programs. By tracing the historical trajectory of the creation of schools for artists, we aim to illuminate the relationship between artistic progress and society, and the underlying pedagogical theories, methodology and challenges that have influenced the education of generations of artists.