1
IVAN MEŠTROVIĆ
Let us express our gratitude to Her …/ Exhibition dedicated to the 130
th
anniversary of
the birth of Ivan Meštrović LOCATION: Gradska loža (Town Guard Loggia), Zadar OPENING/CLOSING DATE: 17. 09. – 01. 12. 2013
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION Ivan Meštrović, who was born 130 years ago, is one of the most important Croatian artists (born 1883 in Vrpolje, Slavonia, Croatia; died 1962 in South Bend, Indiana, the USA; burried in the family mausoleum in Otavice.). The Ivan Meštrović Museums mark the anniversary of his birth with the exhibition LET US EXPRESS OUR GRATITUDE TO HER …, which is on display during the summer in his birthplace, Vrpolje, at the Memorial Art Gallery of Ivan Meštrović, the location of the permanent show of Meštrović's works for already forty years. After being displayed at the Memorial Art Gallery, the exhibition is shown in a somewhat changed form at the Town Guard Loggia in collaboration with the Art Gallery of the National Museum Zadar. During the exhibition Meštrović's work History of Croats (Zagreb, 1932) was placed on the People's square in Zadar.
2 In Vrpolje we are marking the beginning of Meštrović's life, while in Zadar we note his artistic birth which happened with the publishing of the article on the boy artist Ivan Meštrović Gabrilović in the People's paper in Zadar in 1899.
The marking of the birth anniversary is emphasized by the choice of the theme of mother and motherhood that Ivan Meštrović explored all his creative lifetime. The exhibition is entitled Let us express our gratitude to Her …(after Meštrović's epistle on the occasion of the ceremony of santification of the votive Memorial church of king Zvonimir, Our Lady's Church in the village Biskupija kod Knina /Biskupija near Knin/ in 1938).
21 sculptures and a relief in wood, plaster, bronze and marble and 13 drawings and lithographs are exhibited. Ivan Meštrović created the selected works in the period from 1905 until 1947. Their stylistic-sculping features represent Meštrović's various phases, evoking Meštrović's exceptional creative accomplishments on the given theme. With them Ivan Meštrović speaks of his personal experience of the mother through different interpretative messages of sensuality, of a mother's love and suffering, a primeval source of life and personified role of a mother. He adjusts such reflections to his spiritual maturity which he interprets in creations of religious themes of the birth and death of Jesus. Ljiljana Čerina