Ivan Meštrović: the sculptor in residence

1883 – 1962

Ivan Meštrović (1883–1962): the Croatian sculptor who ended a world career as South Bend's professor. Born in Croatia in 1883, Meštrović was by the 1940s among the most honored religious sculptors alive; the Ustaše regime imprisoned him at Zagreb, where he conceived his Pietà and drew it on butcher paper, and after his release he carved it in Rome from a block of Carrara marble — his own likeness in the figure of Joseph of Arimathea. He brought the work to America when he emigrated in 1946; the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibited it from 1947 to 1955, in the museum's first solo exhibition of a living artist. He became an American citizen in 1954. In 1955 Father Hesburgh hired him to Notre Dame, and Meštrović chose the university over the Museum of Modern Art for the Pietà's permanent home: in November 1955 the seven-ton marble was trucked from New York to South Bend on an open trailer and installed in the Church (now Basilica) of the Sacred Heart. He served as professor of sculpture and artist in residence from 1955 until his death — his works stand across the campus — the university’s walking tour of them runs to twenty-one stops, and a count of twenty-four works also circulates, among them Christ and the Samaritan Woman at Jacob's Well before O'Shaughnessy Hall and The Last Supper in the North Dining Hall. He died on 16 January 1962, aged 78, at St. Joseph's Hospital in South Bend. His works' record belongs to the Arts record; the man belongs here — an exile who was jailed for his faith's art and who chose, of all the addresses in the world, this one to keep it in.

Sources:

1. University of Notre Dame, Hesburgh Library pages (hesburgh.nd.edu) — the Pietà's conception in prison, the Rome carving, the 1955 hiring by Hesburgh, and the choice of Notre Dame over the Museum of Modern Art.
2. Notre Dame Magazine, Vol. 15 No. 1 (Spring 1962), University of Notre Dame Archives — the obituary: professor of sculpture at Notre Dame since 1955, died 16 January at St. Joseph's Hospital, South Bend, aged 78; the Syracuse years; American citizenship in 1954; the Pietà's Metropolitan exhibition.
3. Irish Rover (2023), "Basilica of the Sacred Heart's Pietà" — the 1955 open-trailer transport from New York to South Bend, the nine-foot, seven-ton figure, and the twenty further works on campus.