Porodica i domaćinstvo: lepršava svakodnevica Dušana Bekara exhibition catalog

The exhibition Porodica i domaćinstvo: lepršava svakodnevica Dušana Bekara (“Family and Household: The Fluttery Everyday Life of Dušan Bekar”), staged at the Nikola Tesla Technical Museum in Zagreb in the fall of 2024, presents for the first time numerous pieces from the rich œuvre of graphic designer Dušan Bekar.

Dušan Bekar (1931–2019) was an influential art director and one of the members of the development line of Croatian graphic design in the second half of the twentieth century. Raised on the foundations of international modernism, Bekar began his journey in 1949 at the Ozeha agency as an eighteen-year-old, and over the next five decades he developed a unique vocabulary made up of illustrations, typography, calligraphy, photography and three-dimensional objects.

The idea for the retrospective arose from the lesser-known fact that it was Bekar who created the visual identity of the first international Porodica i domaćinstvo (“Family and Household”) exhibition held in the fall of 1957 in the premises of the Technical Museum on Savska Street as part of the Zagreb Autumn Fair (and again in 1958 and 1960). In July 1957, in a juried competition in Belgrade, Bekar’s conceptual poster design was awarded the first prize”. The winning entry was a “meander-house” drawn in single stroke. It became the trademark of the event and served as a key visual in the promotional materials.

Thematically, the 2024 show relied on the exhibits that formed the backbone of the 1957 revue exhibition, which addressed the organization of family life within then newly created urban units and the general improvement of the quality of life of our citizens. As we can read in the magazine Čovjek i prostor (“Man and space”) from the same year, it dealt with topics such as furnishing and organizing living spaces, with an emphasis on furnishing the kitchen and preparing food, furnishing the bathroom and maintaining hygiene, clothing and maintaining footwear, and equipment for travel and leisure. A children’s fair was held as an integral part of, “oriented to meet the needs of the youngest citizens”.

The exhibition posters are based on the “meander-house” key visual which is primarily supplemented by illustrations made especially for the 1957 exhibition, as well as some later illustrations that complement the theme of the lifestyle of the time.

The choice of colors is directly based on the colors of the original billboards, while the typeface choice – Neue Plak – is based on using a modernized version of the fonts used at the time. The handwriting font – Flirt Script – was chosen to resemble as much as possible the calligraphy that Bekar used at that time when creating advertisements and similar materials.

Concept and design by Alira Hrabar Bekar and Dušan Bekar (junior) at BEKAR HAUS. See also the post about the exhibition posters.