Menci Clement Crnčić, Slavonian Shelling Corn, 1891.
The Munich Academy and Art School in Zagreb
The training started in Antikenklasse, that is, working based on plaster casts, after which students transitioned to working with life models in the academy’s classrooms in the so-called Naturklasse, and produced numerous typical portraits.
The first generation of Munich students, the typical so-called academicians, Ferdo Quiquerez, Iso Kršnjavi, Nikola Mašić and somewhat later Menci Clement Crnčić and Celestin Medović, will become the exponents of serious artistic progress in our country, while Bukovac’s impressionistic manner, which is essentially also academic, will then represent a kind of rebellious novum. At the end of the 19th century, some of them will also encourage the establishment of the first fine art academy in the South Slavic region.
The basis on which the Royal Advanced School of Arts and Crafts, the future Academy, built its heterogeneous program and work method is derived from the genes and components of Crnčić’s and Čikoš’s painting school and Frangeš’s and Valdec’s sculpture school, as well as the decorative fine crafts along with the complex of folk art. With the burden of the past and a vision for the future, featuring not only local characteristics, the School’s painstaking success or failure to achieve all of its goals made it a distinct representative of modern times in our region. Based on Iso Kršnjavi’s initially progressive ideas. Founded first as an Advanced School of Arts and Crafts, it was based on the principles of Kršnjavi’s Art Society, “…in accordance with the principle of equalisation of the so-called major and minor arts.