Osječki zbornik, Vol. Vol. 29 No. xx, 2009.
Original scientific paper
Contribution to biography and research on the sculpture work of Josip Leović
Daniel Zec
; Gallery of Fine Arts, Osijek, Croatia
Abstract
The extensive artistic creating of Josip Leović has
been scarcely mentioned in already published expert and
other literature, superficially written in several short texts
without thorough expert study and evaluation of his work.
Data from Leović’s biography, mentioned in those texts,
are not supported by referring literature and sources; besides
they are incomplete. Such situation of his researched
life and work and this significant but in expert literature
neglected Osijek creator, was an incentive to further research
Leović’s opus and check and intepret familiar facts from
his biography. By researching, new biographic data and details
arose that were incorporated into a whole new entirety
of this text. That entirety represents the basis for Leović’s
complete biography which should be further supplemented
by comprehensive artist’s biography together with biographic
data and details not mentioned here. Leović’s life
and work alongside his patron Rudolf Povischil has been
omitted in this text since that will be subject of a separate
study.
Josip Leović was born in Osijek on 14August 1885.
He spent his childhood in his hometown where he attended
primary and secondary school. After having finished
secondary school in 1902, he went for further education to
Vienna in the same year. In Vienna he gained his first artistic
education by serving his sculpturing apprenticeship in
the workshop of famous Austro-Hungarian Hofsteinmetzmeister
( court stonemason ) Eduard Hauser and also at the
Vocational school for stone-mason’s art and sculpture. He
completed his education in 1908, got a job as a stonemason
and sculptor by various masters in Vienna, Graz and Caransebes.
In 1911 he returned to Croatia and was admitted to
the Temporary high school for art and crafts in Zagreb which
he completed in 1915. Then he stayed a whole year by
M. C. Crnčić specializing in copperplate-engraving but in
1916 he went back to Vienna to study at the Special graphic
arts school. In 1917 he returned to Zagreb and then to Osijek
where he stayed until his death. In Osijek, between two
world wars, he staged numerous one-man painting exhibitions
and participated in group exhibitions of Osijek artists
but he rarely put his sculptures on a show. In 1922 he got
a job in the Girls’ grammar school in Osijek as an art teacher
and he worked there until 1947. By the beginning of
the 1920s he met a wealthy Osijek industrialist, a furniture
maker Rudolf Povischil, who would become his patron of
the arts and with whom he would stay in touch until 1945
by taking over various orders and artistic tasks. In 1947 Leović
moved to the Museum of Slavonia in Osijek working
as a restorer and a curator. He spent his entire life, except
schooling period, in Osijek leaving behind a huge artistic,
sculptural, pedagogical and museum-conservation work.
He died in Osijek on 22 January 1963.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
95618
URI
Publication date:
20.5.2010.
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