MUSEUMS OF CROATIA ZAGORJE

ANTUN AUGUSTINČIĆ was born on May 4, 1900 in Klanjec. From 1918, he studied sculpture at the College of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb with Rudolf Valdec and Robert Frangeš, and after it was transformed into the Royal Academy of Arts and Crafts in 1922, he continued his studies with Ivan Meštrović. After graduating in 1924, he went to Paris as a scholarship holder of the French government, where he studied at the École des Arts Décoratifs and at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in the class of J. A. Injalbert. In 1925 he exhibited at the Salon of French Artists and in 1926 at the Salon of Independents.
Upon his return to Zagreb, he participated in graphics exhibitions: in 1926 in Zagreb and in 1927 in Lviv and Zagreb. In the same year, he independently exhibited sculptures in the Salon Galić in Split, and in 1928 he participated in the last exhibition of the Spring Salon. In 1929, he was one of the founders of the art group "Zemlja" and was elected its vice-president. With "Zemlja" he exhibited in 1929, 1931 and 1932 in Zagreb and in 1931 in Paris, and parted ways with it in 1933. At the same time, his works were exhibited in Barcelona in 1929, London and Belgrade in 1930. From the thirties, he intensified his engagement with public monuments, started in 1928.
Participating in and often winning numerous public competitions for monuments around the world, he gained a reputation that would include him in the collective consciousness as a master of equestrian monuments, and which would ultimately bring him the status of the first state sculptor. Thus, in 1940, he became a corresponding member of JAZ, in 1946, a professor (and later rector) of ALU; in 1947 he was appointed a master sculptor, and in 1949 he became a regular member of JAZ and led the Master Sculpture Workshop. He died on May 10, 1979 in Zagreb, and was buried in the park of his Gallery in his native Klanjec.