Original scientific paper
SOCIALIST-REALIST ICONOGRAPHY IN ANTUN AUGUSTINČlć'S SCULPTURES
Ljiljana Kolešnik
; Institut za povijest umjetnosti Zagreb
Abstract
The work of Antun Augustinčić, the most representative practitioner of socialist realism in Croatian sculpture after World War II, is a paradigm of the prevailing iconography of monumental sculpture produced during that brief and quite traumatic period of Croatian art, In it three thematic circles seem particularly important: the portraits of the Leaders and Heroes of the Revolution, scenes from the Resistance Movement, and the symbolic figures of fighters and workers as anonymous weapons of political propaganda and the "building" of socialist society. Augustinčić adopted these themes and styles during his two-year stay in the USSR (1945-6), adding details specific of the Croatian scene. Constructing his monuments (statues) he relies on the formal-compositional characteristics of nineteenth-century historical monuments, as did the majority of Soviet artists. In their scope and political message Augustinčić's projects are closer to the works of Vuletiš, Manizer or Merkurov than to corresponding monuments made by Croatian sculptors at this period. Large dimensions, detailed, even excessive narration, a surfeit of political metaphors and cheap symbolism, the deliberate use of art as political propaganda, all this marks the majority of Augustinčić's monumental sculpture which must be seen as a series of unconvincing political slogans of questionable artistic merit. He continued to use these themes even in the Sixties and Seventies when the ideological pressure on art was already considerably weakened in the name of "liberalization".
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
165779
URI
Publication date:
15.12.1994.
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