Spomenik-inspired sculpture
mutegrey started with photographs of concrete memorials in the Balkans. I kept returning to the same question: what happens when you take that geometry off the hillside and put it on a desk? This page is the answer, or at least the part of the answer that fits in words.
What is a spomenik?
The word "spomenik" is Serbo-Croatian for "monument". In practice it refers to a specific set of abstract concrete memorials built across Yugoslavia between the 1960s and 1980s, commissioned by Tito's government to mark World War II battle sites and concentration camps.
They were designed by some of the best sculptors and architects of the era: Bogdan Bogdanovic, Dusan Dzamonja, Vojin Bakic, among others. Most were left unmaintained after Yugoslavia's dissolution in the 1990s. Some have been demolished. Many are still standing, in forests and on hillsides, visited mostly by photographers and architecture enthusiasts.
I travelled through the region looking for them. The scale is hard to convey in a photo. You walk up a path, turn a corner, and there is a twenty-metre wing of concrete against the sky. The silence is part of the experience. So is the weathering: moss, cracks, graffiti on the lower panels. None of that fits on a shelf. What does fit is the profile.
Five monuments that shaped this practice
I did not copy these sites literally. Each one taught me something about form that I could carry into a small column. Here are the five I return to most often.
Kosmaj Monument (Vojin Bakic, 1971, near Belgrade). Five concrete wings radiating from a central axis. I keep thinking about the radial symmetry and the way each wing tapers as it leaves the core. That taper reads as motion even when the structure is static. It shows up in pieces where I want the silhouette to feel like it is opening outward.
Mrakovica Monument (Dusan Dzamonja, 1972, Kozara, Bosnia). A massive slotted concrete drum on a hilltop. The vertical slots are the whole story. Light passes through, the mass breaks into ribs, and the cylinder stops feeling like a solid block. That slot rhythm influenced Monument Series 3, though the piece itself is an original form.
Ilirska Bistrica (Janez Lenassi, 1965, Slovenia). Stacked stone discs, compressed into a single vertical gesture. The stacking and the compression between layers are what I took from this site. When I step profiles on a small piece, I am often thinking about how those discs sit on each other without quite touching.
Petrova Gora (Vojin Bakic, 1981, Croatia). Steel and concrete shell on a forested hilltop. The surface panels and the monolithic profile against the sky. From a distance it reads as one shape. Up close you see the panel joints and the rust. That tension between smooth outline and segmented surface shows up in several of my pieces.
Podgaric Monument (Dusan Dzamonja, 1967, Croatia). A winged concrete form with internal cavities. The negative space inside the wings matters as much as the mass. I study the wing geometry and the voids when I want a piece to feel light even though it is made of cement.
From monumental to object scale
The jump from a 20-metre memorial to a 125 mm desk object requires abstraction. I can't reproduce the site, the weather, the walk up the hill. What carries across is the geometry: the vertical compression, the slots, the stepped profiles, the way concrete holds an edge.
Every piece in the Monument Series is original. None of them reconstruct an existing monument. I absorb formal qualities across dozens of sites, then design something new that carries the same weight in a different shape. Monument Series 3 shares a slot rhythm with Mrakovica, but the form itself is mine. A stepped base might owe something to Ilirska Bistrica while the top profile goes somewhere else entirely.
Casting helps. Concrete at desk scale still behaves like concrete at building scale: it wants to be heavy, it wants a sharp arris if you let the mould do its job. Plastic versions trade weight for precision. Same model, different material honesty. Both stay true to the geometry rather than smoothing it into generic modern decor.
The Monument Series
Six original pieces, all inspired by spomenik forms but none reproducing a specific monument. Offered in concrete or plastic, made to order at sizes from about 60 mm to 250 mm. They are shelf objects in the strict sense: no function except to hold your attention and a bit of dust.
- Monument Series 1
- Monument Series 2
- Monument Series 3
- Monument Series 4
- Monument Series 5
- Monument Series 6
If you are new to the collection, start with the one whose profile grabs you in the photos. Size is personal. I cast and print to order, so a taller column for a console table or a shorter one for a bookshelf is normal.
Further reading
The best single resource on these monuments, with photographs, maps, and historical context for hundreds of sites across the former Yugoslavia, is the Spomenik Database. I still use it when I forget a site name or want to check a build date before I write about a piece.