Picking up on this blog’s unofficial beat of strange-yet-marvelous Eastern European architecture, we bring you a series shot by Robert Burghardt depicting modernist memorials in the former Yugoslavia. The World War II memorials — erected in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s following Yugoslavia’s liberation after the fall of the Axis regime and built to honor the Communist-led Partisan resistance movement — are scattered across the region, expressing not the “fighting and death” of typical war monuments, but the “life, resistance and energy” of Yugoslav guerrilla fighters. As for the reigning aesthetic, it’s futuristic, borderline apocalyptic, a little Brutalist, a lot of quirky, and completely awesome. Click through to check out three pages of concrete-we-love.
Makedonium Partisan Memorial in Krusev
Sutjeska Partisan Memorial
Kosmaj Partisan Memorial
Kozara Partisan Memorial
Prilep Partisan Memorial
Check out more on Robert Burghardt’s incredible Flickr stream. [Hat tip to Grain Edit for the link.]