Kosta Angeli Radovani
(1916 – 2002)
Dunja IV, 1963
53.2 x 52 x 59 cm
bronze
MG-2453
He studied sculpture at the Brera Academy in Milan from 1934 to 1938, and art history at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb in 1939. From 1941 to 1945 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, he attended a specialist course in sculpture with F. Kršinić and in graphic art with T. Krizman. From 1950 to 1955 he was a professor at the Academy of Applied Arts in Zagreb, and from 1978 to 1990 he taught sculpture at the Academy in Sarajevo.
He worked in the fields of monumental sculpture, drawing and graphic art. As a sculptor, he was preoccupied with the human figure, and his oeuvre is characterized by the distinctly rendered portraits and nudes. In medal making, he summarizes in an original manner, the specifics and characters of an expressive obverse as the only form and content of the medal, such as the portrait of Don Frane Bulić from the rector’s chain that he made in 1968. He modelled numerous nudes, portraits and figural compositions in archaic static forms with an emphasis on mass. He arranged the organic and mechanical parts of the figures in anthropomorphic associative forms.
In search of the archetypal power of sculptural form, he created around two dozen Dunja (eng. quince, and a common female name in Croatia) figures, which have a special place in his oeuvre. These are female nudes with voluminous ripe curves. Quince as a fruit that is left to ripen, for Radovani, represented a personification of the female body as the original and lasting element. Dunja IV is a summarily modelled seated female nude in a corpulent and closed volume.
Text: Tatijana Gareljić,museum consultant of the National Museum of Modern Art © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb
Translated by: Robertina Tomić
Photo: Goran Vranić © National Museum of Modern Art, Zagreb