TWO IVAN MESTROVIC PEN AND INK AND GRAPHITE DRAWINGS

Description

TWO IVAN MESTROVIC DRAWINGS
Ivan Mestrovic (1883-1962). "Croatian Peasants." Pen and ink and graphite drawing, 7" x 10 3/4" (image), 8 1/2" x 10 7/8" (sheet), on a sheet of wove, vellum-like letterhead headed, "University of Notre Dame / Notre Dame, Indiana / Art Department," the image of a man plowing and a man sowing, pencil-drawn figures in less finished state at the left edge and right edge of the sheet, the sheet slightly wrinkled and slightly soiled. Unsigned. Hinged to an acid-free mount. The label on the accompanying (separate) backboard from a former frame bears the typed statement, "...'Croatian Peasants.' We had a rule that if a drawing of Mestrovic's fell on the floor and stayed there for three days, having been walked on, it could be retrieved by some lucky student. 1956..." Unframed.
Ivan Mestrovic. "Madonnas." Black ink drawing, 10 5/8" x 6 7/8" (image), 11" x 8 1/2" (sheet), on a sheet of thin wove, vellum-like paper, red watermark ("COPY") in block capitals diagonally across the center of the sheet, verso, visible from the recto; several creases to the lowermost 1 1/4" of the sheet, touching the composition, two creases in the upper left quadrant of the sheet, clear of the image. Unsigned. Hinged to an acid-free mount, the reverse of which is inscribed, "Ivan Mestrovic drawing of Madonnas done at Notre Dame 1955. Picked up from floor by Alf Svendsen, one of his students." The paper is probably University of Notre Dame office paper, hence the watermark. Unframed.
Mestrovic became professor of art at the University of Notre Dame in 1955.
The drawings are from the collection of Alf Svendsen (born 1930), a student of Mestrovic's at the University of Notre Dame. Prior to our acquisition of them, the drawings were owned by Svendsen since being made by Mestrovic (1956, 1955). The Ivan Mestrovic papers, housed at the archives of the University of Notre Dame, include a folder pertaining to Alf Svendsen (dated 1956, "CMST 9/161").