Miroslav Kraljević

Biography

In 1910, in Požega, Miroslav Kraljević painted himself with a dog named Paša. A year later the picture was shown at an exhibition of the Croatian Art Society, and for it the artist received a scholarship from the department of religious affairs and education. With that money he left for Paris.

He was born on 14 December 1885 in Gospić, in the region of Lika, into a noble family. His childhood was spent mostly between Zagreb and Požega; he finished high school in Gospić (1902–1904). From an early age he drew and loved music and poetry. In 1904 he went to Vienna, enrolled in the law faculty and at the same time studied at the private painting school of Georg Fischhof. Two years later he gave up law for painting.

In the autumn of 1906 Kraljević arrived in Munich. For two terms he studied at the private school of Moritz Heymann, known for training printmakers, and then entered the Academy of Fine Arts, in the class of Hugo von Habermann. There, in 1907–1910, he studied alongside Josip Račić and Vladimir Becić; Oskar Herman studied under another professor. Habermann’s class in Munich was called the “Croatian school”. The four Croats were later named the “Munich Circle”, and Croatian modernism is usually dated from them; the term itself apparently appeared only in the 1950s.

After Munich he returned to his family, by then living in Požega, and spent 1910 and most of 1911 there. Works noted from this time include “Cows at Pasture”, “Bull”, “In the Stables”, portraits of his mother and father, “Girl with a Doll” and “Portrait of Aunt Luika”. He painted landscapes, made posters, modelled in clay and plaster and cast in bronze; among his sculptures “Garter” (1910) is known.

In Paris Kraljević enrolled at La Grande Chaumière, but soon stopped attending and worked in a studio in Montparnasse and at friends’ studios. He began working with the humorous magazine Panurge, which published his drawings. He drew on the spot: cabarets, bars, theatres, the circus, cafés, brothels; among his subjects were dancers of Sergei Diaghilev’s company. Many of the sheets are erotic, and he developed his own type of femme fatale, reminiscent of the heroines of Aubrey Beardsley. From that year there survive “Park Luxembourg”, “Bridge on the Seine”, “Pantheon”, “Cocottes” and “Bonvivant”, a portrait of Arsen Masovčić, the only portrait of a dandy in Croatian painting. Kraljević was called a model of elegance. Of other painters, he was closest to Manet and Cézanne.

Here, too, tuberculosis was discovered, the disease from which his sister had died in 1905.

A year later he returned to Požega. In October 1912 he came to Zagreb, where at the Ulrich salon, from September to the beginning of December, his first solo exhibition was held, retrospective in character. He rented a studio in Rokov Perivoj, and young artists visited him there, among them Milivoj Uzelac and Marijan Trepše. It seems to me that in these late canvases and self-portraits one can see his manner changing: the paint goes on thicker, the colour darkens.

In the winter and spring of 1913 his condition worsened, and he briefly entered a sanatorium in Berstovac. Two months later he left it and returned to Zagreb, where two days after that, on 16 April 1913, he died. He is buried in the family grave in Požega.

In 1914 his graphic work was shown at the International Printmaking Exhibition in Zagreb. In 1942 his works were shown at the Venice Biennale, and in 2013–2014 the Modern Gallery in Zagreb mounted the largest retrospective of his work to date, nearly two hundred pieces.