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Ivan Meštrović: from the eschatological Gesamtkunstwerk of the Temple of Kosovo to the more intimate ‘total design’ of mortuary chapels

One of the most prominent Croatian sculptors of the twentieth century, Ivan Meštrović (1993-1962) studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. During the time he spent immersed in the Viennese ambiance the artist became aware of an extremely important component of artistic activity. Namely, the exhibition practices and manners of representing the artwork. In subsequent periods, the sculptor will give a lot of importance to the exhibition as a form of representing his achievements, but also to its – which is important to underline – 'propaganda' power and possibilities. After his arrival in Vienna, Ivan Meštrović started to follow the exhibitions organised by the Vienna Secession Group, which had already become recognizable places of articulation of anti-traditional and propulsive artistic attitudes, and from 1903 onwards he actively participated in them. It should be noted that the construction of the Vienna Secession House created a new space for the art experiments. Moreover, particular attention was paid to the aesthetics of exhibition design. As a matter of fact, the artists of the Vienna Secession approached the idea of Gesamtkunstwerk, by which they synthesized examples of ‘high’ and ‘applied’ arts, while simultaneously transforming the exhibition in the place of learning and popular meeting place for the Viennese society. The sculptures designed by Ivan Meštrović in Vienna – or at least many of them – are not driven by political and national ideology. In Paris, however, Meštrović creates statues impregnated with an ideological premise, thus provoking interest of the broader cultural public. It is the so-called Kosovo cycle (the Temple of Kosovo), a very complex architectural and sculptural monument, a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk conceived for propaganda purposes. The artist created most of these works by 1912, when he completed a wooden model of the ‘temple’ as well. By showing them at important exhibitions across the European cultural centres, the sculptor insisted on the use of ‘mass-impression exhibition strategies’, motivated by an ideology of the unification of Southern Slavs. Essentially, with the creation of this cycle Meštrović discusses the questions of national freedom and identity, and the pursuit of liberation of the Croatian territory from the Austro-Hungarian hegemony. Basically, the idea that was driving both Ivan Meštrović and other artists was to establish a supranational state of Southern Slavs. As explained by the Croatian scholar, Zoran Kravar, ‘such state-building construct, Croatians experienced not as a political project but as an eschatological event’. Although it remained unrealized this project left a significant mark on Meštrović’s subsequent artistic activity. In his realized buildings, especially the mortuary chapels and churches, the artist would create unique forms of ‘total design’ in Croatian art history of that time. This paper will try to present and analyse the modulation of Meštrović’s interest from the public and ideological use of the Gesamtkunstwerk protocol, as applied to the Temple of Kosovo, to the more intimate – though still public – character of the architectural-sculptural projects of his mortuary chapels and churches that support the idea of ‘memento mori’.

Ivan Meštrović; Gesamtkunstwerk; Temple of Kosovo; Church of Our Lady of Angels in Cavtat; Church of the Most Holy Redeemer in Otavice

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