The funicular at the end of Tomićeva street will take you from Ilica to Gornji grad for 0,6 euros. Somewhere there is an apartment where Marta, the heroine of Grlić's cult film, lives Let it stay between us played by Ksenija Marinković. When she is poisoned by pills, Marta, followed by the looks of curious passers-by, will be taken away on a stretcher by the ambulance. Ivan Meštrović, whose studio in Zagreb is 500 meters away, often had to pass that way, by stairs or by funicular. As an already recognized world artist, Meštrović moved into it at the beginning of the twenties of the XNUMXth century.
When you get off the funicular, you pass the Lotršćak Tower from the 17th century, the same one under whose walls the beautiful Manduša from the novel by Marija Jurić Zagorka was left as a child. From the same tower, every day at noon, the Grički cannon resounds. A few meters away are "Klovićevi dvori", a spacious gallery space where on three levels (on the ground floor, in the courtyard and on two floors) until March 3 you can view the largest retrospective of Ivan Meštrović's work so far.
Ivan Meštrović was born on the Assumption Day, August 15, 1883, and the "Klovićevi dvori" gallery in Zagreb marked the 140th anniversary of the artist's birth with an exhibition, the authors of which are distinguished art historians Petra Vugrinec, museum advisor of the "Klovićevi dvori" Gallery, and Barbara Vujanović, museum curator advisor of Atelijera Meštrović, while the organization of the retrospective is signed by curator Iva Sudec Andreis. Although his creativity spans several decades, continents and media, the exhibition remains focused on his sculptural work, in which he created his greatest opus.
Srđa Zlopogleđ
A few weeks before the opening of the exhibition, in mid-November 2023, in the midst of the election campaign in Serbia, there was almost a minor regional cultural scandal when the official authorities did not want to issue a permit for the export of Meštrović's sculptures, which are in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Serbia in Belgrade. . The signature arrived at the last moment, so they did Srđa Zlopogleđ i Miloš Obilić joined To the winner, Marko Kraljević i Banović Strahinji on Gornji Grad. The model of the Vidovdan Temple from the National Museum in Kruševac did not arrive in Zagreb.
The importance of this exhibition in Croatia is evidenced by the fact that its opening was attended by Prime Minister Andrej Plenković, who is not a very frequent guest at such events. "His artistic achievements are not only a national treasure, but also a universal heritage that transcends borders and connects us with other peoples and artistic expressions," said Plenković, recalling that his works in private and public collections and in locations around the world are "an imperishable and credible promoter." Croatia".
The exhibition with more than 200 sculptures chronologically follows the artist's development from a boy in Otavice to a renowned artist whose works have adorned cities across the Atlantic. Sculptures arrived in "Klović's Palace" from New York, the Tate Gallery in London, Leeds, Ljubljana, Belgrade, Rome and Prague, as well as from various parts of Croatia. In Chicago a couple of years ago, I had the opportunity to closely observe his Indians – two gigantic sculptures (Spearman i Sagittarius) at the entrance to Grant Park. Meštrović did not give his heroes weapons - spear, bow and arrow, but left the viewer to imagine them and focus on the masterfully executed details of the musculature of horses and Indian warriors.
The muscles in one of Meštrović's works ended up in the film Red, white and royal blue. It is an adaptation of the LGBT romance novel by the American author Casey McQuiston for Amazon Prime. The novel was originally published on May 14, 2019, and revolves around the character of Alex Claremont-Diaz, the first son of the US president, and his romantic relationship with Britain's Prince Henry. In one scene, Alex and Henry look at a sculpture Torso Banović Strahinje, which is in the permanent collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Speaking of films and television, Ivan Meštrović was the hero of the series Alexander of Yugoslavia which premiered three years ago, and is currently being rebroadcast. There were a lot of comments about the choice of Nikola Koj for this role, but they were drowned in the sea of negative criticism about the whole series, which has a tragically low rating of 4,5 on IMDB.
"Transportation, disassembly and assembly of sculptures, some of which weigh several tons, are truly unimaginably difficult and responsible work. Scaffolding was built, crates were prepared for months and specially tuned for each piece of art, and we also tested the load-bearing capacity of the house. It is precisely for this reason that there are some works of art, such as wooden giants Adam and Eve from the Meštrović Gallery in Split, it was impossible to move them, and some are waiting for visitors on the ground floor instead of on the first floor, precisely because of their dimensions or weight", said the curators.
By the way, Meštrović is often referred to by the Serbian public as a Croat and a Yugoslav "who could not be a Serb enough to sculpt Serbian heroes". In many interviews he gave to the Belgrade, Zagreb and Split press, he answered that the monumental building called Vidovdanski hram was based on the idea that "all Yugoslav peoples had their own Kosovo" (Croats - Battle of Krbavsko Polje). Although, of course, it is a capital work, the realization of which was estimated at 300 million dollars - with which Meštrović amazed the world at exhibitions in London, Glasgow, Venice and New York (the English called the Temple the "Serbian Valhalla", the hall of dead heroes in Norse mythology), many intellectuals did not look kindly on the Serbian myth dressed in Viennese Art Nouveau. Politician, art critic and painter Moša Pijade stood out in the attacks on Meštrović's style, who, despite his communist commitment and Jewish origin, openly defended the Byzantine tradition and Serbian national identity: "Meštrović is against the Serbian-Byzantine tradition, which he considers dead on the other hand, he would like to create beyond that and beyond any tradition; he wants a new art... Meager education, development without a foundation and in leaps and bounds, took revenge on the Dalmatian shepherd who devoted himself to art in the reigning city... Although he has the basis for a strong individuality, only due to insufficient culture he had to succumb to the influence of the school and the whole environment.... Meštrović personally burnt out his national style, what happened to him happened to many before him: the revolutionary turned into a zealot" (Moša Pijade, "Ivan Meštrović and aspirations for style in our art", Serbian literary gazette, no. IV, 1921). Later, Pijade became somewhat more favorable towards the great artist: "According to those who proclaim Meštrović a genius, today there are already a small number of those who venture to deny it. But who are they who anonymously, through certain newspapers, revile the art of Ivan Meštrović, with the foolish hope that with the Sokak-Amal expressions, with which their biased criticism boils, they will destroy the creator of Memories... The advertisement that was made about Meštrović, the propaganda that was conducted for him in our country and abroad, they were huge and mostly fall on the Ministry of Education. But the Ministry can let anti-Meštrović artists starve to death, but it will never succeed in ushering in the era of Meštrovićism in Serbian art" (Moša Pijade, "On Art", Belgrade, Srpska književna zádruga, 1963).
In contrast to this underestimation of Meštrović was Auguste Rodin, one of the biggest names in European sculpture. After seeing Meštrović's exhibition in Vienna, he called him "the biggest phenomenon among artists today". When Meštrović later came to Paris, he went to Rodin's studio on the recommendation and according to the writing of the then "Obzor", Rodin said of Meštrović: "His works are genius despite the fact that the external appearance of the sculpture suffers from the way Meštrović presents the form". Throughout Europe, Meštrović was compared to Michelangelo, and the Italian press called him the "Homer of stone". Maxim Gorky joined this, who at the exhibition in Rome where Meštrović won the First Prize for sculpture and Gustav Klimt for painting, said that "Meštrović is, along with Tolstoy, the greatest genius the Slavic world has given."
While fascism was ravaging Europe, Mussolini offered Meštrović Italian citizenship, but the sculptor refused because Italy occupied his native Dalmatia. He didn't even want to visit Hitler, so he was arrested and spent a hundred days in prison, from where he was rescued by Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac, because of whom he would later come into conflict with many, especially Serbian intellectuals. To Tito's invitation to return to Yugoslavia, he replied that as a monarchist he did not want to live in a communist country. For the bust of Nikola Tesla in the Tesla Museum in Belgrade, which he made at the scientist's request, he refused a fee, and for the mausoleum of Njegoša in Lovćen, he only asked for "a lump of cheese and Montenegrin prosciutto", similar to Picasso for a movie poster Battle of the Neretva. He donated a monument to his friend, the painter Nadežda Petrović, who for a time lived in his studio in Paris, to her museum in Čačak, and a monument to Svetozar Miletić to Novi Sad.
Ivan Meštrović died in 1962 in South Bend, Indiana, USA. His body was transferred to his native Otavice where he was buried in the family mausoleum.
