Ivan Mestrovic Gallery: Permanent Exhibition Guide
(Ivan Mestrovic Foundation, Published date: 2005. Soft cov...)
Ivan Mestrovic Foundation, Published date: 2005. Soft cover, 160 pp. 2005 edition. Text in English. In total the Gallery exhibition consists of 86 statues and reliefs in marble, bronze or wood, three oil paintings and fifteen drawings. In the park there are a further eight bronze sculptures. Nice full color photography throughout.
Ivan Meštrović was born on 15 August 1883, in Vrpolje, Croatia. He was the son of Mate Mestrovic and Marte Kurabasa. Shortly after his birth, the family returned to Otavice, their home. His father was a poor shepherd and farmer who also did stonemasonry.
Education
Since Mestrovic did not attend school, his earliest education came from the teachings of his family, in which the Bible and historical ballads played a seminal role. Indeed, Mestrovic's father was the only literate villager in Otavice and even had a small library. Mestrovic began at an early age to farm and watch the flocks, but he was more interested in carving and produced spoons and other utilitarian things. Figures of friends and animals, Madonnas, and crucifixes soon followed. In 1898, Mestrovic went to Split, where he was apprenticed to Pavle Bilinic, a stonecutter who specialized in memorials and religious items. He distinguished himself, and Alexander Koenig, a Viennese businessman, became his patron; this allowed Mestrovic to move in 1899 to Vienna, where he studied with Otto Koenig, a retired professor of sculpture, who helped him to prepare for the entrance examination of the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts. The four years that Mestrovic spent at the academy (1900 - 1904) constituted his only formal training, and even there he was often allowed to follow his own propensities. Perhaps only Otto Wagner, one of his teachers, can be considered a true influence, and that more on Mestrovic's architecture than on his sculpture. During this period Mestrovic supplemented his meager Yugoslav stipends by sculpting and by producing facsimiles of paintings in museums.
Career
In 1903, Mestrovic was accepted as an exhibitor by the Vienna Secession. Karl Wittgenstein purchased At the Well of Life and commissioned a number of other pieces. The proceeds from the Wittgenstein sales financed a trip to Italy and a move to Paris (1907 - 1909), where his work received favorable comment from Auguste Rodin, who became a good friend. Also at this time, Mestrovic began work on the monumental Kossovo Temple, a structure that commemorated Serbian nationalism but that was never built. Many of the individual pieces were exhibited in the Vienna Secession in 1909. This was followed by major showings in Zagreb (1910) and at the International Exhibition in Rome (1911), where he was awarded the first prize. Mestrovic spent much of the time between 1910 and 1914 in Yugoslavia. When World War I forced him into exile, he lived first in Rome and then in London, where in 1915 he exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, a show that had many political overtones. He was, in fact, active in the formation of the Yugoslav Committee on National Liberation. From London, he moved to Geneva, and finally to Cannes. In 1919, Mestrovic returned to Zagreb. Here the emphasis of his work shifted from the portraits and religious subjects of his exile to large public monuments of King Peter I, Indian with Bow and Indian with Spear (1925 - 1927), and Gregory, Bishop of Nin (1926) and to architectural designs, such as the Racic Memorial Church in Cavtat, which was completed in 1922. Mestrovic was strongly nationalistic (a bias frequently reflected in his sculpture). But because he disagreed with the current policy, he repeatedly refused government positions member of the Yugoslav Provisional National Assembly (he served only briefly, in 1919), senator, minister, and even prime minister. He remained in Zagreb until 1942, becoming director of the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts. In 1924 and 1925, Mestrovic visited the United States.
During the Italian occupation, he refused to cooperate with the oppressors and was arrested by the Gestapo. Eventually, he was released and in 1942 he went to Rome, where he began his PietÏ, among other works, and later to Lausanne and Geneva. After the war, Mestrovic refused to live under Tito's dictatorship in Yugoslavia. He, therefore, spent some time in Rome, and in 1947 he moved to the United States, where he taught at Syracuse University. Also in 1947, he exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; this was the first one-man exhibition ever granted to a living artist by the Metropolitan. After eight years and the completion of many pieces, including Man and Freedom, a twenty-four-foot bronze for the Mayo Clinic, Mestrovic left Syracuse to become distinguished professor of sculpture at the University of Notre Dame, where he spent the rest of his life, sculpting primarily religious subjects, many of which can be seen on the Notre Dame campus. Neither the 1960 stroke that diminished his sight nor the deaths of his two children could deter him from his work. He continued sculpting until his death in South Bend, Indiana.
Mestrovic's most powerful pieces remind one of Rodin or Gaston Lachaise, but he never ventured into the abstractness of contemporary art. Even the more conservative work of Henry Moore, for example, is extreme compared with Mestrovic's most modern pieces.
Personality
Mestrovic had become an American citizen in 1954. Mestrovic created folk and national heroes in epic proportions, portraits, religious subjects, and architectural structures in many styles neoclassical, art nouveau, expressionistic. The effect can be enticing and powerful, or occasionally sentimental. His place in the history of Western art is difficult to ascertain. A tempered evaluation probably lies somewhere between these extremes.
Quotes from others about the person
Historians Wojciech Roszkowski and Jan Kofman report: "Meštrović's sculpture of the 1389 Battle of Kosovo Field won first prize at an international exhibition in 1911, and critics acclaimed him the greatest sculptor of modern times. "
Professor Miljenko Jurkovic of the University of Zagreb states said: "Ivan Meštrović is the most renowned modern Croatian sculptor. His works combine various influences, and they are both monumental and poetic. He sculpted in stone, bronze, and wood, covering a diverse range of themes - spreading to religious, portraits and symbolic themes. "
Auguste Rodin's evaluation was often quoted: "Meštrović was the greatest phenomena among the sculptors of his time. "
Alonzo Lansford, editor of Arts Magazine in New York City, wrote: "It is therefore singularly significant that he is almost unanimously revered by American sculptors of all schools as one of the greatest living sculptors. "
Connections
In 1904, Mestrovic married Ruža Klein. In 1923 he married Olga Kestercanek; they had four children.