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Ivan Meštrović and the First World War: An Artistic Path from Emigrant Activism to the State Commissions

The sculptor Ivan Meštrović (1883-1962) occupies a unique position in Croatian art history. His formative years as an artist were spent at the Vienna Art Academy where he graduated a three- year course in sculpture and a two-year course in architecture. He had already established himself as an exceptional artist exhibiting with the Viennese Secession. However, Meštrović was a very interesting figure not only because of his artistic production, but also because he built a wide network of relationships with important persons from the cultural and political life. His political engagement was most prominent during World War I, however, it will continue in the following decades up until the end of his life. Still, Ivan Meštrović never considered himself to be a professional politician and he would always point out that his vocation was exclusively that of an artist. Either way, it would be impossible to consider his artistic activity without direct political references from the time he participated, during World War I, in the work of the Yugoslav Committee and when he built his exhibition narratives precisely on the affirmation of the unification of South Slavs. We cannot but look back on the construction of the new identity first through the complex of the Temple of Vidovdan, as a private engagement and expression of his personal activism, to the serious state commission that was articulated thought the Monument to the Unknown Hero atop Mt. Avala, in which he supported ideological guidelines of the ruling dynasty. The iconographic premises were completely different and they were expressed in completely different design contexts.

Ivan Meštrović, First World War, Public Monuments, Sculpture, Modern Art

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