Sculptresses as <i>Agents of Abstraction</i> in Post-World War II Serbia: A Gendered View on Memorial Production

This paper examines the work of three Belgrade-based sculptresses Ana Beli, Olga Jani and Olga Jevri in the 1950s that was characterized by a shift toward abstraction in the context of memorial sculpture.Through analyses of their exploration into abstraction and the confrontation expressed against the dominant practices of memorialization in post-WW2 Serbia and Yugoslavia, the position of these women artists will be discussed from a perspective of gender, questioning the strategies of the patriarchal value system that characterized the local art world in this period.