Marin Studin
(1985 – 1960)
Woman's Head, 1925
wood
41 x 18 x 21 cm
MG-1362
Spring (Nest), 1942
wood
99 x 34 x 6 cm
MG-2083
Marin Studin studied at the academies in Zagreb, Vienna and Prague, and then under A. Bourdelle in Paris (1921 – 1922). Between the two world wars he worked as a high school art teacher, and he later taught at the Academies of Fine Arts in Belgrade and Zagreb.
The initial period of Marin Studin’s career, characterised by the secessionist stylization, pronounced expression and universal symbolism (Melody, 1919, MG-2635) has, in his mature phase, been followed by carving popular figures in wood or relief compositions inspired by folk art with ordinary people as protagonists. The realistic motif of a Woman’s Head is carved in wood as an elongated stylised secessionist-expressive form. As he developed this new preoccupation, he moved ever closer to the folk expression. In the elongated wooden relief Spring (Nest), irregular edges follow the silhouettes of the clinging bodies of a woman and a man facing each other, hugging a nest with baby birds between them. The smooth surfaces of the figures and their stylised folk costumes are barely defined by clear lines of the relief composition, and the title of the work refers to the symbolism of the lyrical scene.
Text: Tatijana Gareljić, Museum advisor 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