Black and white portrait of Ivan Mestrovic - possibly the greatest sculptor since the Renaissance , especially in religious art , with a contemporary and unique style. By Alvin Langdon Coburn (1882-1966), 16 August 1915.
MESTROVIC, IVAN Sculptor
www.croatialogue.com/ivan-mestrovic.html
If you don’t think that Ivan Mestrovic deserves a place among the
greatest sculptors in history, perhaps because you’ve never heard of
him, consider the following: Mestrovic created over fifty monuments in
only two years in Paris, he sculpted throughout his whole life, from
the discovery of his wood hand carvings that he had created while
tending a flock of sheep as a boy though his apprenticeship and
University and two World Wars, even through his retirement to the
countryside in Croatia. He was also the first person to have a one man
exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Beyond that, Mestrovic’s sculptures appear in a great number of public squares throughout Croatia, including sculptures in Dubrovnik and the Grgur Ninski statue with the lucky big toe standing outside of the gates at Diocletian’s Palace in Split.
Considered one of the best sculptors on religious themes to come out of Europe since the Renaissance, Mestrovic is something of a national icon in Croatia. His statues appear widely and have become valuable throughout the country and his former workshop in Zagreb is now a monument to his work and a place for exhibitions and art shows. In sculpting, Mestrovic combined the themes of symbol and myth because of their importance to the European spiritual climate. His work went through several periods and bursts in theme, from dark imagery and shapes to lighter and happier themes characterized by women holding musical instruments.
Born in 1863, Mestrovic tended sheep in a small village before a local artisan noticed his talent and brought him to be an apprentice for a year at his shop. From there, Mestrovic went on to study in France and Switzerland and, although he expressed wishes of returning to Split, stayed abroad during World Wars I and II. Before World War II, Mestrovic when through a period of producing public monuments almost exclusively, as if he felt he needed to leave public works behind before the war started. Mestrovic, however, made it through the fighting unscathed.
Mestrovic’s prolific artistic output influenced the art world greatly. Today his work is on display all over America and Europe and his name is synonymous with excellence in sculpting. But Mestrovic was not limited to one convention. His work also included the production of several major literary works and participation in some of Europe’s most influential political movements.
Comments and faves
godalwayshungry, saturnino.farandola, Dubiosity, CCCvrcak, and 18 other people added this photo to their favorites.
Ray Tomes (62 months ago | reply)
He looks very determined.
artishardinnov (58 months ago | reply)
I agree. I stumbled upon the museum of his work in Split and was pleasantly surprised to find such wonderful work.
Kurt Modler (45 months ago | reply)
Hi, I'm an admin for a group called La Belle Epoque ca.1890 - ca.1914 incl. ArtDeco and ArtNouveau, and we'd love to have this added to the group!
Kurt Modler (45 months ago | reply)
a little bit more obout Ivan Meštrović:
(August 15, 1883 – January 16, 1962) was a Croatian sculptor. He is renowned as possibly the greatest sculptor of religious subject matter since the Renaissance,[citation needed] the first living person to have a one man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Contents
1 Life
2 Work
3 Sources
4 External links
Ivan Meštrović was born in the town of Vrpolje in Slavonia, but spent his childhood in a small village of Otavice in the Dalmatian hinterland. Both of these modern-day Croatian regions were in Austria-Hungary at the time. As a child, Meštrović listened to epic poetry, folk songs and historical ballads while he tended sheep, and this inspired him to carve both in wood and stone. Being the son of a religious woman who recited the Bible by heart, he taught himself to read by comparing the text from their copy of the Bible (acquired by his father, the only literate man in the village) and what he heard from his mother, at the age of twelve.
At the age of sixteen, a master stone cutter from Split Pavle Bilinić noticed his talent and he took him as an apprentice. His artistic skills were improved by studying the monumental buildings in the city and his education at the hands of Bilinić's wife, who was a high-school teacher. Soon, they found a mine owner from Vienna who paid for Meštrović to move there and be admitted to the Art Academy. He had to quickly learn German from scratch and adjust to the new environment, but he persevered and successfully finished his studies.
In 1905 he made his first exhibit with the Secession Group in Vienna, noticeably influenced with the Art Nouveau style. His work quickly became popular, even with the likes of Auguste Rodin, and he soon earned enough for him and his wife (since 1904) Ruža Klein to travel to more international exhibitions.
In 1908 Meštrović moved to Paris and the sculptures made in this period earned him international reputaton. 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. He remained in Rome to spend four years studying ancient Greek sculpture.
In the onset of the World War I, after the assassination in Sarajevo, Meštrović tried to move back to Split via Venice, but was dissuaded by threats made because of his political opposition to the Austro-Hungarian authorities. During the war he also travelled to make exhibits in Paris, Cannes, London and in Switzerland. He was one of the members of the Yugoslav Committee.
After the WWI he moved back home to the newly formed Yugoslavia and met the second love of his life, Olga Kesterčanek, whom he married shortly after. They had four children: Marta, Tvrtko, Maria and Mate, all of who were born in Zagreb, where they settled in 1922. They would later spend the winter months in their mansion in Zagreb and the summer months in a summer house he built by the end of the 1930s in Split. He became a 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.
By 1923 he designed the mausoleum for the Račić family at Cavtat[2], and he also created a set of statues for a never-built Yugoslav national temple that would be erected in Kosovo to commemorate the battle that happened there in 1389.[3]
He continued to travel to post his exhibits around the world: he displayed at the Brooklyn Museum in New York in 1924, in Chicago in 1925, he even traveled to Egypt and Palestine in 1927. In 1927 he entered a design for the coins of the Irish Free State, and though his design arrived too late for consideration it was adopted in 1965 as the seal of the Central Bank of Ireland.[4]
Being in conflict with both the Italians (since he opposed their irredentist territorial pursuit of Dalmatia) and the Germans (since he declined Hitler's invitation to Berlin in the 1930s), he was briefly imprisoned by the Ustaše during World War II. With help from the Vatican he was released, and relocated first to Venice and Rome, and 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. Marshall Tito's government in Yugoslavia eventually invited Meštrović back, but he refused to live in a communist country.
In 1946, Syracuse University offered him a professorship, and he moved to the United States. President Dwight D. Eisenhower personally presided over the 1954 ceremony granting Meštrović American citizenship. He went on to become 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 (including the monument of Njegoš), and in 1952 even signed off his Croatian estates to the people, including over 400 sculptures and numerous drawings.
The early deaths of two of his children preceded his own. His daughter Marta, who moved with him to the US, died in 1949 at the age of 24; his son Tvrtko, who remained in Zagreb, was 39 when he died in 1961. After creating four clay sculptures to memorialize his children, Ivan Meštrović died in early 1962 at the age of 79, in South Bend, Indiana. In accordance with his wishes, his remains were transferred to a mausoleum in his childhood home of Otavice.
His son Matthew (Mate) Meštrović is an American university professor of Modern European history and worked as a Contributing Editor of ”TIME”, served as a lieutenant in the US. Army PsyWar.He was president of the Croatian National congress and lobbied on behalf of Croatian self determination in Washington ,Western Europe and Australia and a deputy in the Croatian Parliament , member of Croatia’s delegation to the Council of Europe and the Interparliamentary Union and served as ambassador in the Foreign Ministry, recipient of Croatian and Bulgarian decorations. Because of his father's and his own political anticommunist believes and commitment to freedom was declared by the Yugoslav regime enemy Number One of the Yugoslav State and a top CIA agent .
His grandson Stjepan is a sociology professor at Texas A&M and author of several books.
Victor, Belgrade
After 80 years of submitting the design for Irish coinage it is finally used on a 2007 Irish commemorative coin in cooperation with the Croatian bank.
He created over fifty monuments during his two years in Paris (1908-1910). The theme of the Serbian Battle of Kosovo particularly moved him, prompting one of his first great works, the Paris Kosovo Monument, and other works in bronze and stone. A lot of his early work revolved around such epic moments from Slavic history in an attempt to foster the pan-Slavic cause in his native country that was under Austro-Hungarian rule.
With the creation of the first Yugoslavia, his focus shifted to more mundane topics such as musical instruments or chapels. He particularly oriented himself towards religious items, mostly made of wood, under artistic influence from the Byzantine and Gothic architecture. The most renowned works from the early period are the Crucifix and Madonna; later he became more impressed by Michelangelo Buonarroti and created a large number of stone reliefs and portraits.
Statue of Gregory of Nin, in Split, Croatia, 1929.
His most famous monuments include:
Gregory of Nin in Split
Josip Juraj Strossmayer in Zagreb
Gratitude to France in Belgrade
Monument to the Unknown Hero, Avala, Belgrade
Victor monument on Kalemegdan Fortress in Belgrade
Svetozar Miletić in Novi Sad
Nikola Tesla in Belgrade and Niagara Falls State Park (identical twin statues)
Nikola Tesla in Zagreb
History of Croats in the garden of Beli dvor in Belgrade[5], copy in the front of Zagreb University in Zagreb
Njegoš mausoleum on Mount Lovćen in Montenegro
The Spring of Life in Zagreb
Domagoj's Archers in Zagreb (Meštrović Foundation)
The Bowman and the Spearman in Chicago
Galleries including his work include:
the Meštrović gallery in Split, formed after his major donation in 1950, which includes 86 statues in marble, stone, bronze, wood and gypsum, 17 drawings, and also eight bronze statues in the open garden, 28 reliefs in wood in the kaštelet and one stone crucifix
the Ivan Meštrović Memorial Gallery created in 1973 in Vrpolje, his birthplace, with 35 works in bronze and plaster stone
the People's Museum in Belgrade which holds monuments such as Miloš Obilić, Kosovo girl, Srđa Zlopogleđa, Kraljević Marko, Widow.
she wolf- (27 months ago | reply)
great photo and read. I have seen many of his fine works while in croatia.
his work is indeed strong!
This photo was invited and added to the Artistic Portraits, Post Processed group.