Original scientific paper
Woman Sculptor Renée Vranyczany-Dobrinović
Darija Alujević
; Arhiv za likovne umjetnosti HAZU, Zagreb
Abstract
The name and sculptural oeuvre of Renée (Irene) Vranyczany-Dobrinović (1879–1958), born in Rijeka, in today’s art history almost completely forgotten, were well known among artists and art critics in Zagreb in the first decades of the 20th century. During the periods of her life spent in Vienna, Paris and Munich she associated with and exhibited alongside major protagonists of Croatian Modernism, Tomislav Krizman and Ivan Meštrović. Today her works remain dispersed in collections all over the world and appear at auctions of different European and American auction houses, but even the art market provides only meagre information of her German nationality. Thorough research of internet sources has yielded photographs of her preserved works and has provided an insight into her artistic oeuvre and career. Thus her only two works in Croatia are especially valuable, the sculpture of Christ of 1904 situated in front of the Evangelical Church of Christ in Opatija and the 1910 Portrait of a Man preserved in the Glyptotheque of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Vranyczany’s solid education first at the Viennese Kunstgewerbeschule, where she graduated in sculpture under Arthur Strasser in 1905, and then in Paris between 1909 and 1912, was at the basis of her interesting oeuvre ranging from academic beginnings with pronouncedly realistic modelling dominated by portraits, to the second phase around 1912 marked by sculptures of dancers created in Paris under the influence of Art Nouveau and inspired by Russian ballet and dancer Anna Pavlova. Although she spent most of her life abroad, she never lost contact with her homeland, and as a descendant of the distinguished and famous Croatian noble family of Vranyczany – Dobrinović she certainly deserves a prominent place in the history of this family, as well as to be included in the history of Croatian art.
Keywords
sculpture; Croatian Modernism; Renée Vranyczany-Dobrinović; Tomislav Krizman; Ivan Meštrović; Paris; Munich
Hrčak ID:
136379
URI
Publication date:
17.3.2015.
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