Josip Turkalj: the student who raised the Moses

1924 – 2007 · Meštrović's assistant 1957 – 1962 · his successor in the studio

Josip Turkalj (1924–2007): the Croatian sculptor — in America he spelled the name Joseph Turkaly — whom Meštrović brought to South Bend to succeed him. Born in Croatia in 1924, the eldest of three sons, he learned carving at his father's knee, studied at the Fine Arts Academy in Zagreb, and took his master's degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome in 1954, winning first prize for sculpture at the National Student Exhibition in Milan that year. Meštrović, who had seen his work, offered him a position as his assistant at Notre Dame in 1957 and bought his ticket to America. He married Julia Szente in 1960; they had six sons.

The Moses: Turkaly's monument on this ground is the eighteen-foot bronze Moses that stands before the Hesburgh Library — First Down Moses to generations of students, for the prophet's raised finger, read from the stadium side as a signal that Notre Dame is number one. Commissioned in 1962, the year of Meštrović's death, it was modeled in plaster in the Notre Dame studio and sent to Italy to be cast in bronze. The subject was the master's own: Moses was the figure to which Meštrović most often returned, and the student's statue is the clearest statement of the school the studio made. The university's Meštrović walking-tour map folds the Moses into its stops, though the university's own writers elsewhere attribute it correctly — the statue is Turkaly's, and this record prints it under his name.

The succession: On Meštrović's death in 1962 Turkaly took over his teaching position at the university and taught sculpture for two years. He went on to a long career in Ohio — resident artist at Gilmour Academy in Gates Mills from 1969 to 1991, with commissions across the country, among them a nine-foot George Washington outside the county courthouse in Buffalo, New York. He died on July 4, 2007.

Sources:

1. Joseph Turkaly exhibition catalogue biography (turkalyart.com, via Diplomatic Connections) — the 1924 birth, the Zagreb and Rome training, the 1954 Milan prize, the 1957 assistant's post, the succession to Meštrović's teaching position, and the Moses among his commissions.
2. "Statue of Moses (University of Notre Dame)," the university's published accounts as carried in the campus record — the 1962 commission, the eighteen-foot bronze, the plaster modeled at Notre Dame and cast in Italy, and Meštrović's influence.
3. "In Loving Memory of Joseph Turkaly, 1924–2007" (croatia.org, from St. Joseph Parish, Mantua, Ohio) — the 1957 hiring and ticket to America, the Gilmour Academy residency of 1969–1991, and the death of July 4, 2007.
4. Notre Dame Magazine / Mendoza College of Business, "Cross Purposes" (2023) — the statement that the Moses outside Hesburgh Library is the work of one of Meštrović's students.