Memories of the Partisan movement of World War II were promoted and cherished by a communist regime that had been brought to power by popular antifascist resistance and used these wartime experiences to legitimise its rule. This led to a rash of monument building, beginning in the 1950s and picking up pace in the 60s and 70s. An enduring source of architectural fascination, these monuments are nowadays increasingly known internationally as “spomeniks” after the Croatian-Bosnian-Serbian word spomenik or memorial.

Monuments built to commemorate particular episodes in the war were important centres of state ceremonial, hosting huge demonstrations on important anniversaries and coach trips of schoolchildren throughout the year.

In the first post-war years these memorials were constructed along traditional lines, with heroic figures of fighters topping stone plinths. By the Sixties and Seventies however local architects were increasingly using avant-garde, abstract forms, creating a memorial style that looked bold, challenging, and totally contemporary.

Although Josip Broz Tito and other leaders were no big fans of modern art, the construction of abstract monuments was the regime’s way of persuading its subjects that they belonged to a cutting-edge society filled with symbols of the future. Monuments from this avant-garde period have become a source of fascination since the collapse of communism, both because of their optimistic faith in progress and the rather poignant fact that the society that built them no longer exists.