CROATIAN FINE ARTS, Frano Kršinić

Frano Kršinić (Lumbarda, 24 August 1897–Zagreb, 1 January 1982) Frano Kršinić was a sincere and true devotee and lover of the stonemasonry skills of his ancestors, and he received his first lessons in stonemasonry in his family in his native Lumbarda. He carried the feeling for stone and his native land in his heart to the end of his life and wove it into his sculptures, both in themes and design. For him, the stone was an inspiration, a driver, a necessity and respect that was translated into some of the most tender compositions of female characters – intimate, lyrical and quietly powerful. He liked to carve his own sculptures. As a respected pedagogue, he supported freedom of experimentation in sculpture, but until the end of his life he remained an advocate of figuration, because he said that he can only do what he experiences, lives and feels. He received his education as a stonemason and sculptor at the stonemasonry department of the craft school in Korčula, at the sculpture and stonemasonry school in Hořice in the Czech Republic (teacher Q. Kocian) and at the Academy of Arts in Prague (professors J.V. Myslbek and J. Štursa). He worked in Prague until early 1921, then he moved to Zagreb, followed by Zemun in 1922. At the invitation of Ivan Meštrović, he came to the Royal Academy of Arts in 1924 to be a teacher. He made a study trip to Greece in 1922, France and Germany in 1937, and the Netherlands, Belgium and France in 1958. He was a co-founder of the Zemlja group in 1929, but resigned the following year. He was a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb from 1940 and rector from 1943. From 1947, he was the head of the Master’s Workshop, a postgraduate study outside the Academy of Fine Arts in separate buildings. From 1948, he was a member of the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences. During his lifetime, he had ten solo exhibitions, and exhibited at 145 group (collective) exhibitions. He exhibited at the Biennale in Venice in 1940 and 1950. An important part of Kršinić’s life was his pedagogical work. He was a teacher of the sculptors who marked the Croatian sculpture of the second half of the 20th century: Vanja Radauš, Ivo Lozica, Vojin Bakić, Dušan Džamonja, Branko Ružić, Kosta Angeli Radovani, Ksenija Kantoci, Ivan Kožarić and Šime Vulas. It is considered that he, along with Ivan Meštrović and Antun Augustinčić, contributed to the development of modern Croatian sculpture. Having built his own expression under the influence of Bourdelle, Despiau and Meštrović, his sculpture represented a break with symbolism and ornamentation in sculpture for Croatian sculpture. Kršinić’s creativity (over 500 works) in the history of Croatian fine art is characterized primarily by depictions of female figures, created in traditional sculptural materials (bronze, stone and marble), and inspired by the cheerfulness and beauty of his native Mediterranean region. However, his sculptural creations of native, portrait, sacred and monumental themes are not to be neglected for Croatian heritage, among which there are also some public representative monuments of socialist realism stylistic expression. His sculptures are kept today in numerous national museum institutions around the world. He organized numerous independent and participated in group exhibitions in the country and the world, and for his work and contribution to art, he was awarded with prominent awards – the State Award for Sculpture in 1949 (for the sculpture Pleti me pleti majčice), the City of Zagreb Award in 1956, the Order of Labor in 1957, the “Vladimir Nazor” Award for lifetime achievement in 1962, the AVNOJ award in 1968. Stylistically consistent, independent of the spirit of the times in which he created, Kršinić is, in the words of Ivo Šimat Banov, a sculptor of “psychologically motivated realism.” With sculptures of women in all stages of life – from childhood to motherhood, Kršinić achieved the highest artistic reach. It is a stylistically recognizable expression that characterizes the simplicity of the design, the purity and conciseness of the form, and the calmness of the line that gives the impression of silence to his sculptures, encompassed from all sides by the smooth and tense body, at the same time giving the impression of tenderness and monumentality. Sculpture, in his words, was a process, and it can be said that this female figure in his oeuvre is one and the same sculpture, developing with each new attempt and transforming into a new variant, richer in art and composition. With each new version, Kršinić remained consistent with the closed form, harmony and balance of shape. Having created a unique lyrical world of female figures, they can be typologically grouped into six thematic cycles: girls, bathers, allegories and symbolic representations, meditations, spinners and knitters, and mother and child. The motif of meditation is not rare in sculptural work, and Kršinić’s Meditations are close in motif to Maillol’s nude sculpture Méditerranée from 1905, which depicts a young girl in a sitting position, knees close to the body and head slightly supported. He executed a series of sculptures with the theme of meditation from 1929, when the first one was created, to 1970. Over four decades, using consistent style and form, Kršinić depicted female nudes with variations in body position, and he modeled them in several sizes and carved about twenty of them in stone. These eponymous sculptures have in common that they are the result of thoughtful and dedicated sculptural maturation and dedication to the female body that has summed up vitality and primalness. They are intimate, calm, shaped by a continuous simple gentle line, in which the position of the head gently bending in contemplation reveals the stillness and silence of his dedication to the stone, the Mediterranean and life. Rašeljka Bilić, MSc, Art Historian