IVAN MESTROVIC

Evening Star, Issue 23382, 27 September 1939, Page 10

IVAN MESTROVIC

AN HEROIC SCULPTOR THINKER AND INVENTOR INFLUENCE ON ART To-day there is no Serbia such as existed prior to the Great War of 1914-18 (says a writer in the Melbourne ‘Age’). Yet the land is still there, and the people still live on it, toiling at their respective jobs—pig-raising, agriculture, commerce, or the liberal professions. A small proportion give their attention to literature and the fine arts with the object not so much of carrying on a national tradition in art _ as the realisation of a now ideal which would embody and express the evolution of a people arising from a state of restricted intellectual growth to one of world significance. Pre-war Serbia, a comparatively small country bounded, or, as the term now goes, encircled, by more powerful, and, in the main, aggressive neighbours, existed in a state of constant defensive alertness which had a depressing influence on the productive and social life of the people. It was at a time when this cloud of potential evil lay heavily over Central Europe that London first awoke to the consciousness of a new type of sculptor whose aims and while obviously vital and aspiring, did not conform to methods long accepted as final fay Western standards. A MIXED RECEPTION, Ivan Mestrovic was born in Serbia in 1883. When he first showed his work at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1915 it was received with mixed feelings by the-London public as something conceptively forceful, but contrary to ail recognised canons relating to beauty. The objective of Mestrovic, however, went deeper than the surface of things. He sought to express in his work the inner meaning of life —not merely the perfectly-formed body, but the impulses and emotions which animated it. In rejecting the Greek monumental impassiveness ho did not seek to distort or otherwise augment the God-created image. When the 1915 exhibition was held this artist, who has since gained world acknowledgment, was a young man of 32, trained in Vienna in a school which favoured the Gothic rather than the classic tradition. It is characteristic of his mental attitude that lie was, from the first, more strongly impressed by the complexities of life than by its smoothly-flowing urbanities. Born and bred in a storm-ridden Balkan State, his natural bent as an introspective thinker was given a special impetus— a hardening impetus —which doubtless led to a preference for carving direct, in stone or wood, in a formalised and sometimes archaistic style. When Mestrovic first came into prominence as an upholder of the principle of self-determination in art, there were, of course, others in the field, notably Rodin, and the Swede, David Edstroim, each of whom, in his own way, trod the thorny path of secession. FACED OPPOSITION. Before attaining acknowledgment each had to face an opposition which was none the less aggressive for being based on a perfectly honest conviction that innovation in art was merely another term for anarchism—a menace not only to art, but to the social fabric generally. A thinker and originator, this artist, while respecting fundamental principles, and seeking not to destroy, but to create, drew to him many imitators. In some cases those followers may have been prompted solely by a crude ambition to bo identified with a new movement—a fear of being branded as old-fashioned. But it is always possible that the example of an artist such as Mestrovic may serve to fan into life the latent spark of initiative in others. Prior to the Yugoslav exhibition held at the Tate Gallery in 1930, it had come to be realised, more particularly in England and America, that the new development in sculpture had come to stay, with a firmly-established place in public opinion, A notable confrere of Mestrovic is Toma Kcsandic, a glyptic sculptor, celebrated chiefly for his carvings in wood, a material which he uses in the execution of life-size figures with a mastery not excelled by any contemporary work in marble or In Mestrovic, as in most of the other members of tho Yugoslav school the architectural tendency is strongly in evidence. „ . ~ , , The conditions of 1914-18 did not crush tho art of Mestrovic or negative his influence; though they may have had some effect in driving him from the paths of orthodoxy, and helping him to realise the force and sxg-

nificance of human ■ reactions to a world crisis. In recent years his art has developed, mainly in the direction of a more generalised and less generic form, and a more sophisticated technique which found expression in works such as the marble Mother and Children. In his book, 1 The Art of Carved Sculpture,’ Kineton Parises gives an interesting description of the artist in 1931. He says: “I saw Mestroyic, his dark, piercing eyes under/ his big, black hat, seeking out the beauties—and the faults—of the exhibition (Grafton Gallery), for he was, as director of the art school at Zagreb, largely responsible not only for the exhibition itself, but tor its plastic and glyptic contents. He had not aged since I last saw him in 1915. His short figure is now a little stockier, his eyes a°little more thoughtful, his voice a little stronger, his restrained friendliness a little more marked. “ I saw him among those figures m wood and stone, I imagined him tending his father’s sheep on the Dalmatian hillsides, and storing within his boyish mind the passionate legends of the Serbo-Croats.” . . Also worth quoting, and in the light of present-day happenings of a sinister interest, is the following excerpt from the catalogue or the London 1915 exhibition: — . , . c ~ “ In ordinary times the art of Mestrovic might be too alien to England, with our tradition of decorum and comfort, but in these times of stress the mood has been impelled upon us through which we can see and feel with him.”