Mladen Stilinović (10 April 1947 – 18 July 2016)[1] was a Croatian conceptual artist and one of the leading figures of the so-called "New Art Practice" in Croatia.
He was one of the founding members of the informal neo-avantgarde, Group of Six Artists (Grupa šestorice autora), together with Vladimir Martek, Boris Demur, Željko Jerman, Sven Stilinović and Fedomir Vučemilović.
He is especially famous for his Exploitation of the Dead series (1984–1990) which has been exhibited at many shows, such as documenta in Kassel (2007).
[5][6] He has had many exhibitions in Croatia and abroad, among the more recent being: The Cynicism of the Poor, Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, (2001–2002), In Search of Balkania, Neue Galerie am Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz, (2002), Blood & Honey – Art in the Balkans, Klosterneuburg, Vienna (2003), Sing!, Ludwig Múzeum (2011)[7] and In the Gorges of the Balkans which was shown in the Kunsthalle Fridericianeum (Kassel, 2003), Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center (Istanbul, 2007) and Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, 2008).
Igor Zabel, the renowned Slovenian curator, chose him as a guest artist at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003) where Stilinović exhibited his work Dictionary – Pain (2000–2003) in which he used white colour to blank out many of the definitions of words in a dictionary replacing them with the word pain.