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Dimensions: measurements note 86cm., 33 7/8 in.

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Provenance: Private collection, Southwold

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Notes: The Croatian sculptor Ivan Mestrovic was one of the most important sculptors of his generation. He was the first living artist to have a one-man show at both the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1915 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 1948. His works rarely appear at auction and the appearance of this large-scale bronze is entirely unprecedented.

Mestrovic was born in the small town of Otavice, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was a stone mason and the young Ivan began an apprenticeship in a Split masonry workshop before leaving for Vienna and its Academy of Fine Arts in 1901. There Mestrovic took part in the exhibitions of the Vienna Seccession where his talents were first recognised.

It was during his years in Vienna that he met his first wife, Ruza Klein. Part of a large and artistic Jewish family, Ruza was working as a miliner's assistant when she met Mestrovic but went on to become an established artist in her own right, studying painting in Dresden and exhibiting in Rome, Zagreb, New York and Paris from 1911 until 1930.

Ruza eloped with the young sculptor in 1904, much to the dismay of her family. The couple were married three years later. The marriage became troubled by jealousies and childlessness and the pair eventually split in 1925, when Mestrovic had a child with the Olga Kestercanek, the woman who was to become his second wife. Despite the separation Mestrovic continued to encourage Ruza's artistic career, putting her name forward for exhibitions, and he did not remarry until after Ruza's death in 1942.

For Mestrovic the political concerns of his homeland were as important as his art. He was a founder-member of the Yugoslav Committee which aimed to unify the southern Slavic states. During World War I much of his time was spent exiled from Croatia working on this project which was realised in 1918 at the close of the war when the Kingdom of Croats, Serbs and Slovenes was formed.

From 1915-16 Mestrovic was in London working closely with the Yugoslav Committee. Ruza joined him from Paris and their time in London was perhaps the most contented and successful of their married years. Mestrovic had his prestigious show at the Victoria and Albert Museum, where he exhibited a hundred sculptures and used his artistic celebrity to raise the profile of the Yugoslav cause. It was during this year that Mestrovic modelled this portrait of his wife. The angular composition and bold modelling convey all the strength and steadfastness which Mestrovic admired in the woman who had shared his early years of hardship and fostered his success. Ruza, seeing the portrait, identified herself with Bizet's Carmen, ready to make any sacrifice for her lover.

Mestrovic's dream of a Yugoslavia united and strengthened against outside forces, was shattered in 1941 when Germany invaded. In the following years the artist resisted both Fascism and Communism and is remembered as a hero of Croatian nationalism. He was imprisoned in Croatia from 1941-43 after refusing the post of Chancellor at his old school - the Academy of Fine Arts in Nazi-occupied Vienna. He left Croatia in 1943 and lived briefly in Switzerland before emigrating to New York State to take up the chair of sculpture created for him at Syracuse University. He never again lived in Croatia as he refused to live under Communism. However, in accordance with his wishes, he was buried in the The Most Holy Redeemer church he had built in Otavice. Moreover, he bequeathed his homes and studios in Zagreb and Split as well the chapel in Otavice to the Croatian people, together with the majority of his sculpture. The bequest now forms the Ivan Mestrovic Museums in Croatia.

Two casts of the portrait of Ruza Klein are in the records of the Ivan Mestrovic Museums in addition to their own cast dating to 1961: one at the Gallery of Modern Art, Zagreb and the present cast, then located in Southwold, England.

RELATED LITERATURE
M. Mestrovic, Ivan Mestrovic: The Making of a Master, London, 2008