This master's thesis deals with the funerary sculpture created in the 1930s for Žale, the central cemetery in Ljubljana. The flourishing of funerary sculpture can be linked to the growth of the culturally conscious bourgeoisie in Ljubljana that commissioned local sculptors to make the sculptures for the graves of its families. Most of the funerary sculptures that were erected in Žale in the 1930s were the work of sculptors including Ivan Zajec, Lojze Dolinar, France and Tone Kralj, Tine Kos, France Gorše, Peter Loboda, Nikolaj Pirnat, Boris Kalin, Frančišek Smerdu, Zdenko Kalin and Karl Putrih. However, it was Boris Kalin who produced the largest number of sculptures by far. This is mostly because he had been working for the Kunovar stonemasonry after returning from Zagreb, where he studied at their Academy of Fine Arts. The form and content of the individual funerary sculpture were influenced by the funerary sculptures in the immediate vicinity, the financial capacity of the patrons, and the general tastes of the time and place in question. The main changes that funerary sculpture underwent during this period are a declining usage of classical tomb symbols, sculpture becoming formally independent of the burial space, less expression of emotion, the rise of Catholic themes, the popularity of the motives of Mary with child and woman with child, a departure from historicism and the use of more voluminous, rounded forms, all of which was predominantly inspired by the professors at the academy in Zagreb and, additionally, by French sculptors. Comparing the funerary sculpture in Žale to the ones in other larger cemeteries of the neighboring countries, one finds that the Slovene production is closest to the one in Zagreb in both form and content. The reason for that is the fact that the sculptors that were professors of the Slovene students at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb were also often commissioned to produce funerary sculptures for the Mirogoj cemetery.
|
