IVAN MEŠTROVIĆ
Certainly the most powerful European artist in the first half of the 20th century was sculptor Ivan Mestrovic, whose talent took him from the position of a shepherd boy to the very top position place in the art world.
Ivan Mestrovic was born in 1883. in the town of Vrpolje in Slavonia, but he spend his childhood in Otavice, a small village in Dalmatian hinterland. As a child Mestrovic tended sheep while listening of orally transmitted epics, folk songs and historical ballads and this inspired him to crave heroic and heroic deeds in wood and stone. His father had been Hajduk (outlaws who defended people from the Turks), also he was the only literate man in the village. His family where very religious people, his mother recited Gospel parables from the memory almost every night, and his father had a Bible (only book in the house which helped Ivan to learned how to read and write).
At age of 16 Ivan M. went to Split to live and work in a workshop of a stone cutter-Pavle Bilinic. He took him as an apprentice but his artistic skills improved in only one year with lots of help of Bilinic wife (high school teacher), and by watching the monumental buildings in the city of Split. With help of mine owner from Vienna he went to Academy of Fine Arts. He had to quickly learn from scratch and adjust to the new environment, but he persevered and successfully finished his studies.
During his studies he met Ruza Klein, child of a Jewish merchant, who never excepted her relationship with Ivan M., because he was a poor village boy, and he purse her from the house. In 1904. they got married, but they never had children.
For
the first time in 1905 he exhibited his works with the group of
Viennese
Secession artists, where he exhibited his first work of art Well
of life. His work quickly became
popular, so he earned enough money to travel to
more international exhibitions. Mestrovic stayed in Paris on several
occasions, and in 1908. he rented the artist studio in Montparnasse, in
only
two years he exectude over fifty sculptures, and became international
success. In
1911 he moved to Belgrade,
and soon after to Rome
where he received the
grand prix for the Serbian
Pavilion on the 1911
Rome International
Exhibition. The
heroes that fought the Turks in the famous Kosovo battle
in 1389 came to
life again in bronze and stone. He presented them to the European
public as
symbols of the patriotic aspiration and striving of the southern Slavs
towards
freedom and independence this time from
the Austro- Hungarian oppressors.
He remained in Rome to spend
four
years studying ancient
Greek
sculpture.
Before World War I he
directed himself towards religious motifs.
No sooner then the end of the
war where
more serene tones observed on a theme of a women playing musical
instruments.
After War he went back to
Zagreb, where he got job as professor and later the director of the Art Institute in
Zagreb, and proceeded to
build numerous internationally renowned works as well as many donated
chapels
and churches and grants to art students. During that time he met his
second
wife Olga, with who he has four children (Marta, Tvrtko, Marija and
Mate).
In the period beetwen two World Wars when he was amased by Michaelangelo, he made large number of stone relifes, naked figures and potraits. The most famous is the monument of Grgur Ninski in Split. He continued to travel to post his exhibits around the world, especcialy in America, where he made monument to the Indians at Grand Park in Chicago in 1928.At this time Ivan M. build the family mausoleum in Otavice conceived as the Church of the Redeemer. He build the mansion in Split for him and his family, mostly as the family residence and his atelier, later on became gallery. On January 31st 1952, the Government of the People’s Republic of Croatia signed a bequest agreement with Meštrović by which the artist donated to “the people and county of Croatia” residential houses in Zagreb and Split, the family mausoleum in Otavice and works according to enclosed lists. This bequest gave the Meštrović Gallery in Split ownership of 70 sculptures, including a considerable number of Meštrović’s best known works. The first exhibition at the Gallery in 1957 contained some 120 works, some that were owned by the Gallery and some owned by Meštrović. The exhibition in 1983 numbered some 200 exhibits, 137 of them owned by the Gallery, namely almost double the number from the bequest. That is to say that the sculptor’s bequest laid out the basic framework for the Gallery, which received additions to its holdings through the continuing care on the part of the artist and his family, as well as those in charge of the Gallery. Some of the plaster sculptures were, either in arrangement with the author, or later with his widow and daughter, executed in stone or bronze in order to preserve them from decay.
Today, the holdings contain 192 sculptures, 583 drawings, 4 paintings, 291 architectonic plans (almost entirely made by Ivan Mestrovic and dating between 1898 and 1961), and 2 furniture sets, one of which is made according to Mestrovic's sketches and is a part of the New Permanent Display of the former dining room. The Ivan Mestrovic Gallery houses not only works owned by it, but also 168 works of art owned by Ivan Mestrovic's heirs. Apart form the museum holdings, the Gallery collects documentation relating to Ivan Mestrovic's life and work. Especially interesting items are the photographs of the artist's first works (taken at the beginning of the century in Vienna and in 1908 and 1909 in Paris) and the archive material. There is the family archive found in the house in 1952, containing letters of the family members and friends, as well astheir personal documents, and the archive of the builder M. MarasovicMeštrović
Gallery in Split
Cyclops, bronze, 1933
Woman
by the sea, bronze, 1926
Persephone, bronze,1946
My
Mother, bronze,1909
The
Katunaric family, bronze, 1906
After he finished his mansion he restored the old Kastelet (convent). On
this place he preserved a 16th-century chapel
and erected a new one, much larger. In this Chapel of the Holy Cross,
Mestrovic
intended to put 28 wooden reliefs of the life of Christ and a crucifix
on
permanent display. He had begun working on this series in 1917 and did
not
finish until 1954.
The purpose of the chapel where are the wooden
relifes is to be served for mass ceremony on the old slavic languange,
what was
also wish of Mestrovic.
court-yard
Jesus
wooden relief of
the life of Christ
Mestrovic's sculpture composition in Zagreb
During the war he was briefly imprisoned by the Ustaše
during
the With help from the Vatican
he was released for Venice and Rome,
later to Switzerland. Unfortunately not all of his family managed to
escape --
his first wife Ruža died in 1942
and many from her Jewish
family were killed
in the Holocaust.
Later, his brother Petar was imprisoned by the emerging Communists,
which further depressed the artist. After the World War II Marshall Tito
invited Meštrović
back but he refused to live in a communist country. In 1946 the Syracuse University
offered him professorship
and he moved to the United States.President
Dwight D.
Eisenhower
personally presided
over a ceremony granting Meštrović the American citizenship
in 1954.
He went on to be a professor at the University of Notre
Dame in 1955.
Before he died, Meštrović returned to Yugoslavia
one last time in order to visit the imprisoned Cardinal Alojzije
Stepinac and Tito
himself. At the request of various people from his homeland he sent 59
statues
from the United States to Yugoslavia, and in 1952 even
signed off his
Croatian estates to the people, including over 400 sculptures and
numerous
drawings.
Sources:
- Keckemet,
Dusko, Ivan Mestrovic – Split, Mestrovic Gallery Split and
Spektar Zagreb, Yugoslavia 1969
- MUZEOLOGIJA 36/1999
The works of Ivan Mestrovic in collections, museums and galleries, 1999. - LINKS:
http://www.mdc.hr/mestrovic/okrugli-stol.htm#1
http://www.mdc.hr/mestrovic/kastelet/index-hr.htm
http://archives.syr.edu/arch/faculty/mestbio.htm