Lot 206: TOMA ROSANDIC 1878-1959

DESIRE

height 75cm., 29in.

signed

walnut

PROVENANCE

F.M.S. Winand

EXHIBITED

London, Grafton Galleries, Toma Rosandic, 1917;
Possibly, London, Grafton Galleries, 1917-18;
Possibly, London, Ennismore Gardens, Serbian Red Cross Exhibition, Serbo-Croat Art, 1919;
London, Victoria and Albert Museum, loan exhibit, 1920s-30s;
London, The Fine Art Society, Sculpture Between the Wars, 10th June- 1st August 1986, no.88, illustrated in the exhibition catalogue.

LITERATURE

Galerie Yougoslave de Beaux Arts, Rosandic, 1920, illustrated pl. 58;
Kineton Parkes, Sculpture of Today, Chapman and Hall, London, 1921 ('Languor');
Stanley Casson, Some Modern Sculptors, Oxford University Press, London, 1928, illustrated fig.37;
Kineton Parkes, The Art of Carved Sculpture, Chapman and Hall, London, 1932 ('Languor');
Alan Durst, Wood Carving, Studio, 1938, pp.78-9, illustrated pl.55.

NOTE

Born in Split, Croatia, Rosandic came into contact with sculpture at an early age through his father who was a stone worker. He quickly mastered the techniques of carving in both stone and wood and was also inspired by his compatriot, Ivan Mestrovic. Following the outbreak of the First World War, Rosandic left for London where his exhibition at the Grafton Galleries in 1917 was received to great acclaim. In a review of works in The New Age, 1917, Ezra Pound commented that he found Rosandic's work 'hopeful' concluding that he 'should be more inclined to trust him than Mestrovic'. After the war, Rosandic settled in Belgrade where he founded an arts school that became known as the 'Master Workshop' attracting visiting international artists such as Henry Moore who exhibited in Belgrade in March 1955.

Although the title of this piece was listed as Desire when exhibited at The Fine Art Society in 1986, an alternative title may have been Languor. Of a carved walnut torso on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum at the time of writing, Kineton Parkes remarked that it '[exhibits] the artist's surface-work admirably' (Sculpture of Today, 1921). In Parkes' later volume, The Art of Carved Sculpture he expands:

'In the vigorous but placid female torso known as Languor, the figure is completely detached from the block, and might be mistaken for modelling in bronze, for even the tooled surface might be very well imitated in clay with the spatula'.