TRIO SARAJEVO SURREALISM ART AT IT'S FINEST

I have collected the trio Sarajevo postcards since the war in BiH, including some similar postcards made by some less know art collectives in Sarajevo during the war. I put together them in a 20"x30" collage print, framed them and put them on my wall. They turned out better than I expected.

Sarajevo is known for it's artists and one of the most memorable aspects of the war in Bosnia was it's resistance by it's citizens, whether it was the trio art collective or the posters seen in the book "Evil doesn't live here" it added a unique character to the resistance.

The ironic symbolism seen in many of these postcards have stuck with me since I first saw them and carry a lot of weight and meaning for me.

* Bojan and Dada Hadzihalilovic make up the design group TRIO SARAJEVO. Formed in 1985, originally as a three-person design team comprised of graduates from the Sarajevo faculty of fine arts, TRIO were part of the particular Sarajevo generation which was raised on the punk culture and pop-art movements.
By the late-1980s TRIO had become one of the busiest and easily the most innovative design company in former Yugoslavia. Their first widely-acclaimed work was a redesign of the famous Beatles album cover 'Sargeant Pepper' for the rock group Plavi Orcestar (Blue Orchestra), which sold almost half a million copies. From there TRIO went on to create designs for a number of other bands, theatre companies and art and culture-based magazines.
In 1989 TRIO won a Saatchi & Saatchi award for their work at a TV and marketing festival in Slovenia, and subsequently spent three months working at Saatchi & Saatchi's Belgrade office.
* In April 1992 the Bosnian war began, and Sarajevo was besieged. Despite the obvious hardships of life in a city under siege for two and a half years, and although they had many opportunities to continue work outside Bosnia-Herzegovina, TRIO opted to remain in Sarajevo throughout the war.
Faced with a market suddenly reduced to a 3km wide stretch of a city under siege, TRIO have nonetheless continued to earn a living as commercial designers, receiving payment for their work in food, cigarettes and (occasionally) small amounts of money. During the war TRIO have managed to assemble a computerised design office put together from various components which were borrowed or begged from friends and colleagues in Sarajevo. When electricity is available, they work with Pagemaker 4.0, Coreldraw 5.0 and Photoshop. When it is not, they work by hand with their dwindling supply of tempera and inks.
* TRIO's "commercial" work during the war has included product design (packaging for cigarettes, etc.) and corporate image-making (they created the graphic identity for the national railway company of Bosnia-Herzegovina), but its mainstay has been in publishing. TRIO are responsible for the design and production of a wide range of newspapers and magazines in Sarajevo, including half a dozen regular titles.
* In addition to their regular work, TRIO have also invested a great deal of time putting together a collection of graphic art aimed at raising awareness of the plight of their city throughout Europe. The work which has made them famous in western capitals is based on a series of reworkings of well-known advertising and pop-art images, such as the logos for Speilberg's Jurassic Park, Coca-Cola, Absolut Vodka, Warhol's famous Campbell's Soup, and satirical adaptations of famous posters, such as Monroe's Some Like it Hot, Your Country Needs You, Wake Up America!, Munch's Scream, and many more.
This personal work has been written about in both the news and art press. Among English language publications which have covered the life and work of TRIO are: The Independent, The Guardian, Newsweek, The Scotsman, ArtPress, Creative Review.
*Text above reproduced from:http://www.wmin.ac.uk/media/sarajevo/trio_blurb.html

You can visit their website directly which includes their examples of the postcards...
http://www.fabrika.com/en/?id=1&t=14&m=245&media=print