Researching Antun Augustinčić and Vanja Radauš in Belgrade

As part of the CROSCULPTURE research project our team member Davorin Vujčić went to Belgrade from November 13 - 19, 2018 to do some field research. He focused on the oeuvres of Croatian sculptors Antun Augustinčić and Vanja Radauš, on their works in the collections of Belgrade museums, their monuments in public space and archival material stored in the Yugoslav Archives.

Before leaving, he arranged meetings with curators of relevant museums and met with colleagues from the Museum of Yugoslavia, the National Museum, The Military Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Gallery of the Army House of Serbia, which own the works of the aforementioned sculptors.

With insights into their collections and the information they have, he discovered some of the, up to now unknown, works by A. Augustinčić and V. Radauša in the Gallery of the Army House of Serbia and the Gallery of Matica Srpska in Novi Sad.

Davorin was kind enough to send us some high resolution photos of the sculptures in public spaces (I. Meštrović: Monument of Gratitude to France and Winner on Kalemegdan; Augustinčić: Cossack at the Grave of Liberators in Belgrade, 1944; V. Radauš: Falling in front of the Yugoslav Drama Theater and Bombaš in the City Park in Zemun). His research in the Yugoslavian Archives was fruitful and yielded material about the sculptural production of the 20th century in this area: Master Workshops, some of the monumental achievements of the aforementioned sculptors, correspondence (Archives J. B. Tita) and phototechnical material, the most important part of which was recorded or copied.