HOMMAGE À FRANČIŠEK SMERDU: SIXTY YEARS LATER

Academy-trained sculptor Frančišek Smerdu (1908, Postojna–1964, Ljubljana) is remembered on the one hand as a remarkably subtle and insightful interpreter of the human body, which he exalted, through his sculptural and wider artistic vision, in heroic, martial poses that are nevertheless full of human feeling, in public monuments commemorating important events or figures that typically feature monumentally accentuated perceptions of volumes, masses, surfaces and spaces; and on the other as a refined interpreter of the female form, from which he elicited softness, tenderness, gentleness, sensuousness, eroticism and spiritual beauty. He is a sculptor who incorporated into his own sculptural language the approaches of artists who had left their mark on sculpture from the late 19th century onwards and continued to do so throughout the greater part of the twentieth century. The exhibition in Križevniška Church will consist of a selection of small sculptures owned by the family of Frančišek Smerdu’s daughter Mojca Smerdu, herself an academy-trained sculptor, and serves to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of his premature death.