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Ivan Mestrovic: Artist and Patriot
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20086 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1992 |
1,985 Words |
| Author
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Stjepan G. Mestrovic
Stjepan G. Mestrovic is a professor of sociology at Texas A &
M University. His latest book is The Coming Fin de Siecle,
Rutledge, London, 1991. |
Sculptor Ivan Mestrovic was born on Assumption Day, August 15, 1883, in the tiny Croatian village of Vrpolje in what, until the recent civil war, used to be Yugoslavia. At the time of Ivan's birth, Croatia was still part of the Austro--Hungarian Empire. His parents were very poor and often worked as seasonal migrants. Ivan, the eldest of six children, spent his boyhood tending sheep in the hills near Otavice, a remote village in one of the most mountainous and backward regions of Croatia.
When Ivan was born, a Gypsy predicted that his hands would bring him immortality. Villagers recall that his mother, Marta, took the prediction seriously and protected his hands from, manual labor throughout his childhood. He was his mother's undisputed darling, a trait that Sigmund Freud also experienced and claimed is essential for successful geniuses. Ivan later captured the tenderness of the relationship with his mother in an oil painting that depicts his mother sitting beneath a grape bough and himself as his mother's angel, complete with wings. He would portray his mother many times during his career, as a representation of herself, the Platonic Idea of Knowledge, or as Croatia.
Ivan's father, Mate, worked as a stone cutter and embellishments he created throughout the village. He was also reputed to have been among the few villagers who could read and write. By all accounts in the village, Ivan's family life was warm, stable, and psychologically secure, even though the family was extremely poor and, by modern Western standards, his life was often hard.
As a boy Ivan expressed his artistic talent by whittling soft stones while tending sheep.
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