The modernism of Kosta Angeli Radovani's figural sculptures

Doktorska disertacija Modernizam figuralne plastike Koste Angelija Radovanija bavi se utvrđivanjem modernističkih značajki i izvora modernizma figuralne plastike Koste Angelija Radovanija (1916. – 2002.), te istraživanjem njegova cjelokupna opusa. Provedena je sustavna i cjelovita monografska obrada kiparskog opusa u kontekstu onodobne nacionalne i međunarodne likovne scene, te je prvi put sastavljen katalog svih poznatih djela ovog umjetnika. Istraženi su akt i portret, medaljerski opus, javna skulptura, spomenička plastika, crtež i grafika, njegov spisateljski opus, pedagoški doprinos te kulturno-društveni angažman. Učinjena je analiza i vrednovanje spomeničke i komorne plastike i načina rada, definiranje tipologije kao i interpretacija akta i portreta te formalna analiza i valorizacija važnijih radova. Djela su sistematizirana po vrsti, tehnici, temi i kompozicijskim rješenjima, te stilskomorfološkim značajkama. Istraživanje je dovelo do nekoliko novih hipoteza o ovom kompleksnom opusu, počevši od teze o dugotrajnom formativnom razdoblju. Utvrđeno je da iako nikada nije napustio figuraciju i prepoznatljivost antropomorfnog motiva te se koristio tradicionalnim materijalima i oblikovnim načelima, na formalnoj i konceptualnoj razini njegov način oblikovanja pripada umjerenom modernizmu. Taj se oblik modernizma razlikuje od prevladavajućeg apstraktnog izraza koji je u Hrvatskoj obilježio stilsku pojavu poslijeratnog visokog modernizma. Opus Koste Angelija Radovanija za dio likovne kritike nije bio dovoljno avangardan, a za drugi dio stručne javnosti nije bio dovoljno tradicionalan. Istraživanje je pokazalo da je uvodio inovacije u prikaz akta i portreta, te da je u tom području oblikovanja ostvario značajan doprinos u hrvatskom poslijeratnom kiparstvu modernizma. Ovo istraživanje, među ostalim, upućuje na to da je pri formiranju modernističkog izraza asimilirao mnogobrojne utjecaje – kiparstvo europskog modernizma, utjecaje izvaneuropskih kultura i drugih vrsta »primitivizama« i arhaizama. Disertacija donosi nove spoznaje o radu i djelovanju autora koje nadopunjuju, proširuju, te omogućuju novi pogled na neke aspekte dosadašnjih istraživanja kao i na cjelokupan opus. Ostvario je jedinstven i prepoznatljiv opus koji predstavlja značajan doprinos hrvatskoj i europskoj modernističkoj figuralnoj plastici.The doctoral dissertation focuses on the determination of modernist features and sources of modernism in the figural sculpture of Kosta Angeli Radovani (1916–2002), as well as on the research into his entire artistic oeuvre. A systematic and complete monographic analysis of his sculptural oeuvre was carried out in the context of the local and international artistic scene of the time. Figurative sculpture (nude and portrait), medal design oeuvre, public sculpture, memorial monuments, drawing, and prints were explored. The dissertation brings an interpretation of his creative oeuvre, as well as new knowledge of his pedagogical contribution and his cultural and social involvement. An analysis and evaluation of memorial and intimate sculpture and methods of work, the definition of typology as well as the interpretation of nudes and portraits and formal analysis and valorization of his more important works were carried out. The works were systematized by type, technique, theme and compositional solutions, as well as by stylistic and morphological features. After collecting data on the works, and, where necessary, also on their attribution, dating and photography, a catalog of all known works of this artist was created for the first time. Then, we analyzed the modernity of his artistic approach to the traditional theme of nude and portrait, which he formed using traditional materials and shaping principles. All this led us to new knowledge about the artist's work and activity. At the beginning of the dissertation, we set up the hypotheses for the scientific research work: 1. Although he never abandoned the figuration and recognizability of the anthropomorphic motif—using traditional materials and shaping principles—on a formal and conceptual level, his style of shaping belongs to moderate modernism; 2. He introduces innovations in the representation of nudes and portraits; 3. In the field of shaping female nudes and portraits, he makes a significant contribution to Croatian post-war sculpture of modernism; 4. Kosta Angeli Radovani's version of modernism differs from the prevailing abstract expression that, in Croatia, was associated with the concept of post-war modernism (for some, it was not avant-garde or traditional enough); 5. During the formation of modernist expression, he assimilated numerous influences — the sculpture of European modernism, the influences of non-European cultures, and other types of "primitivisms" and archaisms. In the introductory chapters, the methodology, hypotheses, and objectives of the scientific research work are presented, as well as is an overview of earlier research and critical reviews of literature. Then, the socio-political context and its influence on the sculptor's formative period were analyzed. A thesis is presented about the unusually long formative period (1926– 1952), which was divided into two parts—conditioned by both the social and artistic as well as cultural context, and by life circumstances of Kosta Angeli Radovani. The first part of the formative period includes the childhood and the creation of student works, as well as studies at the Brera Academy in Milan. When he went to study in Milan, he left the original influences of classics, then French modern sculpture, Aristide Maillol in the nude, and Charles Despiau in the portrait. At that time, his approach to shaping and interest in the subjects of nude and portrait was directed by his professor, a post-Donatellian artist Francesco Messina, who taught sculpture guided by the syntagm, "Do not invent!". The Italian art was dominated by figuration, and Milan was the center of the artistic movement of the Novecento. He gained insights into recent phenomena by following the program of Milan's avant-garde Galleria il Milione, which exhibited abstraction, as well as by studying works of sculptors who introduced modernism into the shaping of traditional subjects of nude and portrait (Arturo Martini, Giacomo Manzù, Marino Marini). He assimilated further influences during his numerous student trips through Italy. He was particularly impressed by the art of Etruscans, ancient Egyptians, and other ancient civilizations, as well as by medieval heritage. Presented are the circumstances and direct influences that determined the formation of his artistic expression. The source of his specific modernism is also analyzed and interpreted. After completing his studies and returning to Zagreb, the second part of his formative period begins (1939–1952). He spends the war years in Zagreb, where he attends a specialization at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. Until 1945, the bulk of his oeuvre consists of female nudes, portraits, and drawings that show the sculptor's need to free himself from previous influences, searching for his own expression. In that period, there is an increasingly pronounced stylization and reduction of the representation. After the end of the war, Angeli Radovani adjusts to the socio-political circumstances of the time. Socialist realism was a politically and state imposed doctrine, so, in the artistic expression, there were changes in themes of representation and shaping. Angeli Radovani covers the then naked female body with clothes because the motif of the nude is contrary to new socialist morality. He shows figures in the context of labor and social responsibility. The volume is closed, and the selection of themes limited. Until the end of the 1940s, he models within the framework of a realistic style of shaping, while his portraits of national heroes are influenced by socialist realism. For his Portrait of Nada Dimić (Portret Nade Dimić; 1947) he won the third prize of the Committee for Culture and Art of the Government of Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia in 1948. Angeli Radovani participates in two public competitions for monuments, which was a new theme in his sculptural oeuvre (a monument to the Croatian poet Silvije Strahimir Kranjčević and The Monument to the Uprising of the People of Drežnica [Spomenik ustanku naroda Drežnice], which won the second prize and was realized in the village of Drežnica in 1949). A new impetus for a shift in the manner of his expression arises during a study trip in 1950– 1951. He travels through Italy, France, Belgium, and Switzerland, studying the art of nonEuropean cultures, absorbing the power of their simple, cubic forms. This is the time when his formative period ends, and the phase of mature expression begins. He works and researches a lot to find his own expression. This leads him to refine his sculptural language and establish a new idea of sculpture that would surpass all previous symbolisms, classicisms, and academicisms. His first solo exhibition in 1952 was also the first solo exhibition of a sculptor after the Second World War. The free choice of the theme of representation (nude) and the way in which he stylized the nude and the portrait heralded changes. The exhibition arouses numerous reviews in the press as well as polemics. After the chapter in which the presence and reception of the mature and late oeuvre of Kosta Angeli Radovani was researched, the figural sculpture that gained its full expression in the mature period of his creation was also researched. He abandons idealization, narrativeness, and realism in the representation of the body, the representation is reduced, and the surface of the sculpture intentionally unpolished and unfinished, which evokes a tactile experience. On the surface, there are visible traces of shaping by fingers and palm, the signs of the sculptor's physical gesture. Anatomical arbitrariness is visible in the shaping of the elements of some sculptures. The sculptor does not shy away from deformations and ugliness in order to achieve an expressive, sometimes grotesque impression. The feet, hands, thighs, and buttocks are oversized, which points to the simplicity of "primitivist" forms. He draws inspiration from the creations of non-European cultures and from various archaisms. He increasingly applies stylization and the speech of the masses; the nudes are voluminous, and the need to investigate various sculptural problems results in the execution of numerous variations of the same theme. He is engaged in the research into various relations of compositional elements, such as figure and pedestal, the closedness and openness of the mass to space, the flatness and saliency of the volume of sculpture, the polishedness and roughness of surface, which in some works joins at sharp edges contrary to anatomical accuracy. In a special chapter, the sculptural cycle The Quince (Dunja; 19 variations, 1957–1986) is interpreted, with which he reaches the pinnacle of sculptural research, creating distinctive variants of a lush, mature female body. In some examples, he reduces certain parts of the body to round geometric bodies (cylinder, sphere), or stylizes them to the edge of abstraction. He never abandoned the recognition of the motif, which was his conscious choice. Until 1963 dominates the nude in standing position, but then the seated nude prevails, which intrigues him with immense possibilities of composing numerous variants while searching for a balance of elements. They are connected by the principle of building the mass from the core. He innovates the role of the pedestal, which he either abolishes or integrates into the sculptural solution (it is part of the cast, or he chooses a wooden stump, an iron rail, on which the figure is seated). By analyzing his mature sculptural oeuvre, we determined various formal and stylistic features in the manner of his shaping. In the nudes, we distinguish between three ways of modeling: round volumes and organic forms, then organic forms that he, in individual parts, cubizes and shapes with flat surfaces that are joined at sharp edges, and more radical modeling by decomposing round volumes through the process of geometrization and cubizing. The representation of female nude, as the dominant theme of the sculptor's work— viewed in the context of "primitivist" art—can also be interpreted as a symbol of natural cycles, the primordial, and the fertility. The commitment to depicting human figure stems from personal humanism, but also from the artistic climate that prevailed after the Second World War, and which, after the Holocaust and the era of the atomic bomb, aroused the interest of a group of artists while returning to the sources, the pre-cultural and the prerational. The portrait, which is the sculptor's second major theme, is explored in separate chapters. In addition to memorial portrait sculptures, he also modeled portraits of acquaintances and academicians, renowned personalities from Croatian culture, art, history, and science. He made portraits to order, but also on his own initiative, attracted by an interesting, unusual physiognomy or personality and achievements of the person he portrayed, and motivated by the desire to solve a new artistic problem. Already during his schooling he models portraits under the influence of academic realism and other influences. He gets rid of these influences with portraits created during the war, when he abandons description and idealization. After a short period of modeling portraits in the spirit of socialist realism, in the early 1950s comes a shift toward more modern expression. Important for finding his own expression was his knowledge of the portrait oeuvres of Marino Marini and Marcel Gimond. In the voluminous portrait oeuvre of Kosta Angeli Radovani, we determined the existence of two dominant stylistic and morphological approaches—in the first, the face is elongated, the surfaces follow the bones of the skull, and the surface of the face is furrowed with lines, with which he achieves expressiveness, while in the other approach, there is a reduction of descriptive elements to essential physiognomic features of the portrayed, the volumetric thickening, and a higher degree of geometric stylization, emphasized abstraction, and abandonment of psychologization. From this approach, with further stylization, he started to emphasize geometrization. He modeled some portraits in multiple versions, returning to them in various time periods as they were stimulating for him in his solving of certain sculptural problems. It is the shaping, which focuses on shaping phenomena and research of form—rather than on the similarity to the model—that the elements of modernism are most present. He strove to present the key physiognomic characteristics and the unique character of the portrayed in a synthetic manner and with reduced means. He created a unique gallery of portraits of unknown persons, but also of those working in the public, such as renowned art historians like Kruno Prijatelj, Ljubo Karaman, the archaeologist Grga Novak, academicians, musicians, directors, and other people from cultural, scientific, and public life. By choosing various physiognomies and characters, he went beyond the individual level, presenting a general, universal image of man. He also created a notable oeuvre of relief portraits in the medium of portrait medal. These are predominantly portraits of people from public, cultural, and scientific life, as well as academicians whom he was modeling from 1963 to 2000. He mostly adhered to the traditional circular shape of the portrait medal. The representation is on the obverse, while the reverse is empty. His most significant medal design achievement is the Rector's Chain (Rektorski lanac; 1969). For medals, he uses two modeling methods. In one group of works there is an emphasized geometric stylization and harder modeling, while in the other group, there is softer modeling, a greater degree of reduction and highlighting of the experience of a person's character, as well as organic forms. He is focused on a condensed representation of physiognomy and the transfer of the experience of the portrayed. He does not elevate it to a symbol, a sign, which is the case in the classic medal design approach, but freely interprets it. The excellence of the portrait is manifested in the use of minimal visual artistic elements with which he achieves maximum expression. In the consistent shaping of the portrait, we find his unique contribution to and significance in the corpus of Croatian medal production. We found that the elements of modernism are manifested in the terseness of representation and the reduction of details, as well as in the emphasized stylization. Special chapters are devoted to drawing and print, which, until now, have been a less wellknown and poorly analyzed part of his oeuvre. For Kosta Angeli Radovani, drawing was his favorite art technique. With the help of drawings, we can follow the development of his artistic thinking, as well as changes that occurred in various stages of his creation. He used drawing in a wide range of forms, from sketches, with which he developed his ideas for sculptures and the reflection of body in space, to drawing as an independent visual artistic discipline, a rounded work of art. At the same time, he uses various artistic possibilities of drawing by using line—as a legible trace of gesture and movement—as well as spots. He creates drawings that are characterized by lightness and refinement, but also by power that he achieves with a clean, strong line. He achieves a range of representations from flat—made with a clean line—to voluminous, which are created by shading with pencil, charcoal, watercolor, or some other visual art technique. In drawing, the representation experienced a greater degree of deformity than in sculpture, motivated by a greater need for experimentation, creative freedom, and the specific qualities of the visual art technique. In two drawings created in 1957, he reached the edge of abstraction by reducing the representation and by radical geometric stylization. With drawings he also created templates according to which to make prints. The most common motifs are portraits and nudes – from the intimacy of The Quince or female nudes in the artist's studio, to the vortex of eroticized bodies playing and dancing. In prints, the central motif is a group of figures with emphasized movements and gestures, while the most common themes of representation are the struggle for freedom and justice. Along with the line with which he describes the scene, he also uses pure colors for the representation of the background and the volume of figures. Modernist features can be found in the deformities and expressive lines used to create the representation, as well as in the terseness and stylization of the representation. Monumental solutions are a less well-known and, so far, an only partially analyzed segment of the sculptural oeuvre of Kosta Angeli Radovani. This research has shown that, as a creator or co-creator, he had sixteen realized and fifteen unrealized projects. A special group consists of portrait sculptures placed in public spaces or in interiors of public institutions, cultural, and school facilities. By analyzing the entire oeuvre, the typology of memorial sculpture was established. This comprises reliefs, memorial figures (solid sculpture), spatially and sculpturally complex memorial solutions, as well as portraits and busts of real persons. Realized and unrealized solutions are dealt with in separate chapters, and, within this broader division, solid sculpture, relief, and monumental portraits and busts created for public spaces constitute separate units. From his earliest memorial solutions, he collaborated with architects. The ratio of creative contribution of the sculptor and the architect depended on the character of work. In the case of more complex memorial solutions, the architect's part was more emphasized in the design of architectural elements, while the sculptor's contribution was more pronounced in the sculptural execution of relief. The involvement of the architect in the elaboration of the conceptual project shows a high degree of responsibility of the sculptor toward the intervention in public space, and the need for each segment of the planning and execution of the artwork to be at a high professional level. He created monuments dedicated to work, while one unrealized monument is dedicated to workers' self-management, which is a rarity among post-war monuments. In addition, in several executions he shows female figures, which is also found in a smaller number of postwar memorial solutions. In the realized monuments, we can see a stylistic and morphological range from realistic monumental figural works (Monument to the Uprising of the People of Drežnica [Spomenik ustanku naroda Drežnice; 1949]), reliefs with narrative representations, to monuments characterized by modernist features through the reduction of elements, geometric stylization, and cubic construction of volumes (Macedonian Woman [Makedonka, 1956–1961]; Monument to Vjekoslav Karas [Spomenik Vjekoslavu Karasu, 1974]). In the execution of reliefs with figural themes, he applies geometric stylization, and, in this area, also modernizes the representation of figures. The most significant and the only spatially and sculpturally complex memorial solution realized is the Memorial Park to the Shot (Spomenpark strijeljanih) at Šubićevac in Šibenik (1961–1984), which he realized in collaboration with Zdenko Kolacio. The modernistically refined geometrized architectural elements establish a symbolic relationship with the place of exec