Ivan Mestrovic, the greatest modern Croatian sculptor and one of the most prominent sculptors of this century, was born at Vrpolje, but his family home was at Otavice, near Drnis, Dalmatia.. As a shepherd on Mt. Svilaja "his unusual skill at carving was noted and he was apprenticed to P. Bilinic in Split. Supervised by A. Ferraroni, his sculptures attracted wide attention and he received a scholarship to study in Vienna. He exhibited with the Vienna Secession. At the 1911 Rome Internationale he won first prize and world fame. The interwar period was fruitful and versatile. Outstanding works from this time are the Indians, Chicago, and Grgur Ninski, Split. His Zagreb home and Split mansion are now Croatian Museums containing much of his work. Imprisoned and later released by the Occupation, he fled to the West. Unwilling to return to Communist Yugoslavia, he accepted a teaching position at Syracuse, and later at Notre Dame. He died at South Bend in 1962, and is now buried in the family Mausoleum at Otavice.

Mestrovic was born into a Croatian peasant family from the Dalmatian hinterland (Dalmatinska zagova). His ancestors may not have always been peasants since the etymology of the name is 'son of the master,' but that was way back, in Bosnia, before the Turkish invasions. The family had fled before the Turks and settled in Otavice, a small village a few miles from Drnis, and about 50 miles from Split. At the time of his birth, August 15, 1883, his father and six uncles lived together in a typical peasant patriarchal family headed by his grandfather, also named Ivan. They struggled to gain a living from their flocks of sheep and goats, and small scale farming. To supplement their income, Mestrovic's father often went to the more prosperous Sava Valley in Slavonia to work as a temporary labourer as a mason or farmer. On one of those trips Ivan was born in the small town of Vrpolje, but the family returned to Otavice before he was a year old. Mestrovic’s father was a craftsman, building stone houses and bridges, making furniture, often with carved decorative patterns, and stone ornaments for tombs. His father twice carved figures -- for the tomb of a younger brother, and for that of his young daughter. As a boy, Ivan spent much time with his father at work, and derived his first inspiration and training in the process.

His father was the only literate man in his village and helped Ivan to learn to read. From his grandparents and mother, Ivan learned the great poems and ballads of his country -- a sort of oral

history of the great deeds and events and heroes. One must have a deep understanding of this typical Croatian peasant background if one is to have a deep insight into the artistic output of Ivan Mestrovic. From it comes the deeply realistic character of his sculpture, their invariable focus on telling a story, their highly charged emotional atmosphere, their pervasive religious concerns even in works of an ostensibly secular nature or in themes from Greek mythology, and the recurrent focus on the history and heroes of the Croatian people.

Apparently, Mestrovic began carving even before he was old enough to help watch the flocks. As a shepherd he had plenty of time to carve such useful objects as wooden spoons, decorative mirror frames, etc. Soon however he began to carve figures of his playmates and various animals, as well as religious subjects including Madonnas and crucifixes. His father and mother both encouraged him to continue his carving, and once on a trip to Sibenik, after seeing the famous medieval sculptures at the Cathedral of St Jacob (Sveti Jakov), his father remarked: 'Perhaps he will succeed where I could not.'

His fame as a carver spread locally, and one of the prosperous citizens of Drnis asked him to make a head of Christ. Within two weeks he brought the finished carving, which pleased his patron who offered the boy a silver florin (about 50 cents). The young sculptor was insulted, refused the florin, and walked home angry. About age fifteen, his father managed to get enough money to take his son to Split and apprentice him to a local stone cutter and carver, Bilinic. On the way they stopped to visit the famed Cathedral at Trogir, with its medieval sculptures. Mestrovic boarded with a schoolteacher named Skarica which gave him the opportunity to study alongside her children. Bilinic put Mestrovic to work carving ornaments and sometimes figures. His wife, the daughter of an Italian drawing professor, gave Mestrovic lessons in drawing. After less than a year in Split, Mestrovic came to the attention of a manufacturer from Vienna who offered to help him attend art school there.

In Vienna Mestrovic lived with a Czech family named Sycora. He took private lessons from a retired professor of sculpture, Konig, in preparation for entering the Art Academy. He passed the entrance exams, was admitted to the Academy, and in less than a year had an exhibit of his work which attracted considerable attention. Since his work was not in the prevailing style, he soon received an invitation from the progressive artists in the Vienna Secession movement to join them. He thereafter regularly exhibited with the Secession group. Though he achieved a degree of fame, he received no commissions, and had a real struggle to survive on meagre scholarship assistance. In his fifth year in Vienna, a wealthy manufacturer, Wittgenstein, purchased some of his work. He received an invitation from the architect of the imperial palace to do some figures for a new wing. Mestrovic did not accept, in part because he was unwilling to work in the prescribed style, in part because of his opposition to the Austrian domination of Croatia.

Shortly before World War I, Mestrovic went to Paris. During this period he began work on the projected Temple of Kossovo. He exhibited at the Salon d'Automne and attracted the attention of Rodin with whom he developed a close friendship. Rodin expressed the opinion that Mestrovic

was a phenomenon among the younger sculptors. After two years Mestrovic was invited to arrange a comprehensive exhibit of his work at the Secession Gallery in Vienna. The exhibit created a sensation both because of its aesthetic qualities and its political themes, which were perceived as anti-Austro-Hungarian and allied with the nationalist movements in Croatia and Serbia.

In 1911, he participated in an International exhibit in Italy where his work was acclaimed and given the first prize for sculpture. This exhibit brought him worldwide fame.

During World War I Mestrovic worked in Italy, France, and England. With such political leaders as Anton Trumbic and Frano Supilo, he formed the Yugoslav Committee devoted to the creation of a southern Slavic nation liberated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire and federated with Serbia, Montenegro, and even Bulgaria. After the War, the Allies created such a nation, Yugoslavia.

Though he had helped create Yugoslavia, Mestrovic did not enter political life there. The King nominated him for the Senate, but he refused, though he did maintain good personal relations with the King. He gave the new state all the sculptures he created for the proposed Temple of Kossovo. This monument, however, was never actually built. Mestrovic was at the height of his fame in the interwar years and received commissions from all over Europe and America. In this period he created the Racic Mausoleum at Cavtat, his family Mausoleum at Otavice, built a large home and studio at Split, remodelled a house in the Old Town area of Zagreb as a home and studio. Many public monuments date from this period, including the statue of Grgur Ninski in Split and the Indians in Grant Park, Chicago. Except for brief visits abroad in connection with exhibits and commissions, the major part of this period was spent in Zagreb and Split. He was appointed the Rector of the Academy of Art in Zagreb, and had a wide influence on young artists.

During the second World War, he was briefly imprisoned in Zagreb by the Occupation, but with the help of the Vatican he was able to take refuge in Switzerland. After the War, he worked for some time in Italy. Though the new Communist Yugoslavia invited him to return, he was thoroughly disillusioned with the notion of a Yugoslavia, and especially with its new rulers. The famous American sculptress, Melvina Hoffman, arranged an unprecedented one-man show at the Metropolitan Art Institute in New York and Mestrovic came to the United States. He received and accepted an offer to teach at Syracuse University in 1946. In spite of being widely acclaimed as a genius, his fame gradually declined in art circles. His output however did not. He worked prodigiously while at Syracuse, and a few years later, in 1955, at Notre Dame University. He continued to work to the last day of his life, January 16, 1962.

What is Mestrovic stature as an artist -- in the perspective of world art, Croatian art, and modern art. Since I, too, am the son of Croatian peasants, I bring a whole load of various biases to such an evaluation. However, making due allowance for ethnic pride, it is still possible to pass an objective judgment. There is little doubt that art historians of the future will include Mestrovic on their list of, say, the 100 greatest sculptors in the history of mankind. There is even less doubt that he would make the list of the 10 best Croatian sculptors, right alongside such luminaries as Radman and Juraj Dalmatinac. He had been compared by knowledgeable critics with Michelangelo, though Mestrovic himself deprecated that comparison out of his enormous admiration and respect for Michelangelo.

In my own considered judgment, Mestrovic certainly ranks among the best sculptors of modern times, say, the last 100 years. Personally, I think his only rival in power, talent, and achievement is Henry Moore. If one takes into consideration the whole opus of an artist, rather than individual works, Mestrovic’s stature grows enormously. Many artists are capable of one or two works of very great achievement. The true geniuses produce a large body of work of the highest achievement. Mestrovic is such an artist. Additionally, an artist stature is enhanced if he produces a coordinated set of works in a single place and for a single purpose. For instance, even if other artists can match in excellence any individual work of Michelangelo's, his achievement would still be greater because of his Sistine Chapel which is a collective work of extraordinary excellence, any element of which would rank as very great art. Mestrovic almost alone among modern artists has produced just such an ensemble, the Castelet in Split. This series of wood carvings, and their setting, in my judgment is the finest piece of sculpture in the 20th Century.

In the years between his first appearance on the artistic scene about 1900 and the end of World War II in 1945, Mestrovic’s reputation was enormous and worldwide among artists, critics, and the general public. Since then his fame has been in decline among artists and critics, though the public that comes into contact with his work still finds it enormously appealing. I feel sure that the future will be more generous in its evaluation of Mestrovic than the present moment.

The change in Mestrovic’s reputation among artists and art critics, before and after World War II, is so striking it needs some explanation. The explanation will also contribute to a more objective appraisal of his stature. Mestrovic, of course, is not the only artist who has undergone such shifts in fame, some even of a similar degree. I can think, off hand, of someone like the poet T. S. Eliot who was on everyone’s lips up to the publication of his poem Ash Wednesday, and who today, while not ignored, any more than Mestrovic is, is no longer the darling of the critics and aesthetes.

Why the change in fame? Several factors are at work, from very large tendencies that cut across all fields of human endeavour, to more localised phenomena in the art world itself. Ever since the 16th Century the Western world has been moving toward an ever more explicitly irreligious outlook on the universe and on man himself. This ontological shift culminates symbolically in the Death of God theology of the 60s and early 70s, though it is easily visible to anyone who studies the intellectual history of modern times. We intellectuals, of course, set the mood and temper for our culture and sooner or later influence all its values and judgments. Mestrovic is caught in that shift. Putting it bluntly, as the artists and critics became more and more aware of his pervasive religious outlook, embodied in almost all of his works, but increasingly the explicit theme of most of his work, they grew less and less impressed with him as a sculptor. The same sort of thing happened, as I mentioned with T. S. Elliott as his poetry became more and more openly concerned with religious themes. In an anti-religious age, an artist impregnated with a religious vision of the world and man cannot expect to receive the highest accolades. And yet the aesthetic judgment of his earlier, more political and classical themes, was made did not abandon the aesthetic qualities of his earlier work, rather it raised them to new heights.

A second more aesthetic factor, though intimately related to the first, also comes into play. Ever since the 16th Century, artists have been moving away from a concern with objects, events, and men in the real world, and have become increasingly concerned with aesthetic objects and problems. Art up until the 16th Century was for the sake of man, the nation, or God. Since then it increasingly becomes art for art’s sake. The ordinary man (by ordinary, I mean non-artists), has little conscious sensitivity to, or interest in, purely aesthetic qualities. What they expect and want from art is some relevance to their own lives. Ordinary men used to control what the artist produced because they were the ones who hired him. Today's artist has become emancipated from his patrons, works in his studio for his own purposes and to please himself not the patron. Modern marketing techniques make it possible for many to learn considerable incomes despite their obvious contempt for the ultimate patrons. Those less skilled in salesmanship starve in garrets, and get their reward in the psychological satisfaction of being ARTISTS, in capital letters, different from and superior to ordinary men, even men in positions of wealth and power.

Because Mestrovic was so relentlessly realistic in his artistic outlook, he runs counter to this trend in the art world. In his art he was always telling a story he considered relevant to the lives of ordinary people (remember by 'ordinary' I mean people who are not primarily interested in aesthetics, but rather in living their lives and influencing things and events in the real world). In an age of specialists, the artist who is relentlessly a human being first, who conceives of his art as being in the service of other human beings first of all, who is not willing to play the art for art’s sake game, cannot expect to receive high esteem and acclaim.

Thirdly, and very closely tied to this last factor, there has been a very great shift in artistic style in the last 100 years, beginning with the Impressionists in France in the 1880s. Increasingly art turned away from naturalistic styles and a realistic depiction of things and events in the world, to abstraction. This shift takes many forms, but it reached its height in the United States immediately after World War II and carried the art world by storm. The abstractionists ruled the day, the galleries and the art market, and above all the critics. Once again Mestrovic was out of tune. He simply refused, and probably was psychically incapable, of abandoning his realistic style for more abstract mannerisms. In an age of abstract art, the realistic artist has little appeal.

These explanations, remember, are very brief, and over-simplified. A more extensive account would have to make numerous qualifications, and further, more detailed, explanations. Nevertheless, I am convinced, for good reasons and on the basis of strong evidence which I cannot go into here, that this explanation is essentially sound.

Fashions, of course, are notoriously transitory and seldom totally replace their predecessors, and always are subject to nostalgic revivals. So Mestrovic has not been totally ignored in contemporary times, and I am sure that when the cultural mood changes, he will be re-evaluated, and his fame and reputation will be restored. More importantly, the aesthetes, critics, and intellectuals are not the majority of the human race, and perhaps not even the most important part. Mestrovic never lost his appeal to the 'ordinary' people, and I suspect never will. Of course, even a few aesthetes, critics, and intellectuals remain in tune with the ordinary people, and so never lost their admiration and respect for this truly very great artist