The development line of the Technical Museum, which celebrate its seventyth anniversary in 2024, intersects with Bekar's career path at several points, so that even at the very beginning of the deliberations about this exhibition, more than enough reasons emerged to present his works here.

We take the year 1949 as the starting point of Bekar's career in the context of learning, training and work. That year, eighteen-year-old Bekar attended a preparatory course in applied graphics at the Croatian Advertising Institute (Ozeha) - and the already established architect Marijan Haberle built the building of the current Technical Museum "as an extension of the premises of the Zagreb Fair at 25 Savska street".

In July 1957, at a juried competition in Belgrade, Bekar's conceptual design for the poster for the 1st international exhibition Family and Household 1957 with a children's fair was "adopted with the first prize" and became the trademark of the event held in the autumn of the same year at that location.

Thus, through the original function of the building, then set up to serve as a fair exhibition, the young Bekar affirmed himself through the striking visual of the "meander house". The author himself considered the engagement for this exhibition to be one of the turning points in his further work throughout his life, and in the following years he would create a series of notable visuals for cultural events, often awarded at home and abroad.

He came from the Ozeha agency environment, which shaped the marketing profession in this region during the 1950s by applying Western research models and thus significantly influenced the culture of commercial advertising. A circle of experts formed around the agency - economists, architects, artists and designers. They, like Bekar, came into contact with it throughout their careers, which were often linked to the development and advertising departments of Croatian companies.

Ozeha enabled him to collaborate with numerous companies and factories that were the driving forces of our economy in its infancy, as well as with excellent engineers, such as, for example, Bruno Planinšek on projects for the Bagat, Ina and Saponia factories, Marijan Serdarušić (Saponia's advertising department) on advertising campaigns for Kalodont and Plavi radion, and Mihovil Skobe, who headed Ozeha's marketing department.

Some of these earliest works for the aforementioned companies, such as brochures of electronic products for the Bagat sewing and machine tool factory, illustrations and graphic solutions for the Hypenol, Superior 98, Super plavi 93 products of the oil industrial giant INA, the "BIS" poster and the packaging for Dodo powder from Saponia, as well as a selection of packaging and advertising material for the Fotokemika company, had been shown in this exhibition.

The exhibition thematically relied on the units that formed the backbone of the 1957 revue exhibition, which addressed the organization of family life within, than, newly created urban units and the general improvement of the quality of life of our citizens.

As we can read in the magazine "Man and space" (Čovjek i prostor) from the same year, this specialized exhibition 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.

As an integral part of the exhibition a Children's Fair was also held - it was "oriented to meet the needs of the youngest citizens".

In terms of spatial concept, the exhibition operated on two levels - for adults and for children, and was divided into seven chapters based on a series of six decorative-painting panels that Bekar created in 1957 on the occasion of the first revue exhibition on the given topics: hygiene, recreation, housing, nutrition, clothing and apartment decoration, with a seventh chapter intended for children.

This exhibition featured around three hundred artworks from the period 1955-1995 by designer, photographer and illustrator Dušan Bekar, created for numerous industrial clients – from small companies and factories to large business entities from the second half of the twentieth century.

Focus was on communication solutions such as product packaging with accompanying information and promotional materials; corporate materials, advertising campaigns and visual identities of brands and companies, and is interspersed with a curated selection of objects from the holdings of the Technical Museum Nikola Tesla to which individual design solutions refer.

Thanks to the wide range and diverse selection of works dispalyed, the exhibition allowed readings from various angles in the context of the development of technique and technology, trends in design and art in general, and the development of society in particular.

Edited excerpt from exhibiton catalogue
written by Alira Hrabar Bekar.

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IMPRESSUM
Authors of the exhibition concept
Dušan Bekar and Alira Hrabar Bekar

design of visual identity and
exhibition layout
Dušan Bekar and Alira Hrabar Bekar

All photos by Dušan Bekar and Alira Hrabar Bekar, except portrait photo by Davorin Visnjić (Pixsell)