Ksenija Kantoci
(1909-1995)
The Head of a Ram, 1957
wood
MG-5936
Ksenija Kantoci graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1937, and continued her studies in France, Italy and Germany.
Kantoci’s oeuvre abounds in powerful existentially inspired and concise forms of small sizes, of an accentuated monumentality and of symbolic quality. She modelled stylised portraits, abstract female figures and heads of domestic animals mostly in wood, but also in bronze, stone and terracotta, all of which are complemented by drawings made in various techniques. Kantoci’s striking psychologically charged and realistically conceived portraits feature a reduction of form and a compression of volume, as is the case in the portrait of her husband, Croatian painter Frano Šimunović, dating from 1955-1956. By reducing mass, Kantoci almost completely abandoned her reality-based concept, which clearly sets her apart from other Croatian sculptors of the generation.
The volume of Ksenija Kantoci’s The Head of a Ram from 1957 is generalised, with the sculpture’s narrative details reduced to the essential shape of the animal’s head.
Text: Tatijana Gareljić, museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Ana Janković
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb