Tito’s top chisellers
The former Yugoslavia was an anomaly: a socialist state that allowed free travel to the West and promoted ‘self-management’ rather than bureaucratic repression. It was a dictatorship that promoted decentralisation and free expression.
This facilitated an explosion in post-modern art, in contrast with the socialist realism in other Communist states.
Many post-war Yugoslav sculptors had been inspired by henry Moore, the english artist who died in 1986 and was renowned for his semi-abstract bronze sculptures. his 1955 Yugoslav exhibition, which he opened himself, had a huge impact on the local art scene.
It was seen as a move by the Communist government towards loosening the constraints on art and encouraged them to use more liberal and abstract forms.
hundreds of monuments, spomeniks in Serbo-Croat, were commissioned by dictator Josip Tito to mark the resistance against Axis invaders during World War II. Tito chose not to honour particular generals so as not to favour any ethnic group and instead commissioned a series of monolithic abstract works. The programme led to some extraordinary public sculpture, the most famous being the one in Podgaric, 90 minutes’ drive south-east of Zagreb.
Created in 1967, it is the work of Croatian sculptor Dusan Dzamonja. Officially called the Monument To The Revolution Of The People Of Moslavina, it is a huge aluminium-plated eye with abstract concrete wings the size of a double-decker bus.
Other Moore-inspired sculptors such as Vojin Bakic and Kosta Angeli Radovani in Zagreb, Olga Jancic and Ana Beslic in Belgrade and Jakob Savinsek in Ljubljana produced some extraordinary abstract sculptures in the same vein.
The only British sculptor I’m aware of who trained in Yugoslavia was the West Midlands socialist artist Ian Walters (1930-2006). his work included portrait sculptures of Nelson Mandela, harold Wilson, Tony Benn, Barbara Castle and James Callaghan.
Sarah Donne, Falmouth, Cornwall. QUESTION What became of the author of the Hitler Diaries after they were found to be forged? IN 1983, German reporter Gerd heidemann stunned the world by claiming he’d unearthed 61 volumes of hitler’s diaries. It subsequently emerged that Konrad Kujau, an antiques dealer, painter and con artist, had forged the documents between 1978 and 1983.
heidemann negotiated their sale to Germany’s Stern magazine for £2.5million. In turn, Rupert Murdoch agreed to pay about £600,000 for the serial rights for the Sunday Times.
Konrad Paul Kujau (1938-2000) was born in Lobau and brought up in east Germany. he had a history of petty crime and deception.
In the mid-Seventies he began selling Nazi memorabilia and eventually turned to forgery, producing paintings he passed off as by hitler and an increasing number of notes, poems and letters.
On their publication in 1983, the diaries were soon proved to be fabrications and heidemann and Kujau were arrested. In August 1984, Kujau was sentenced to 4½ years in jail for forgery.
heidemann was convicted of fraud and also received a 4½-year prison sentence the following year.
On his release after three years, Kujau became a minor celebrity, appearing on TV as a ‘forgery expert’ and set up a business selling ‘genuine Kujau fakes’ in the style of various major artists. he ran for Mayor of Stuttgart in 1996, receiving 901 votes. he died of cancer in 2000. In 2008, German newspaper Bild reported that heidemann, then 76, was living alone in a cramped hamburg apartment on £280 a month with £560,000 of debts. Andrew Stanner, Durham. QUESTION Why is the common foxglove so called? The origin of the word foxglove is something of a mystery stretching back to Anglo-Saxon times. The plant’s scientific name is
Digitalis (e.g. Digitalis purpurea), because it resembles a thimble and can be fitted over a finger (Latin
digitus ‘finger’). This explains the ‘glove’ part of the etymology, which has variously appeared in Old english as foxegloue, foxes clofa, foxes clofe, foxes glofa, foxesclofe, foxesgloua and foxesgloue. But the connection with the fox has never been adequately established.
In english etymologies (1847), William henry Fox Talbot states: ‘In Welsh this flower is called by the beautiful name of
maneg ellyllon, or the fairies’ glove. ‘Now, in the days of our ancestors, as everyone knows, these little elves were called in english “the good folks”. No doubt, then, these flowers were called ‘the good folks’ gloves’, a name since shortened into foxgloves.’
however, this etymology was vigorously denied by Walter W. Skeat, the pre-eminent British philologist of the late 19th and early 20th century. he favoured a simpler etymology, one where animal names were routinely applied to plants in Anglo-Saxon Britain.
he wrote: ‘[To us] such names as fox-glove and harebell seem senseless... yet, it is easily understood. The names are simply childish.’ he goes on to provide an extensive list of Anglo-Saxon plants with animal names — catmint, cocksfoot, cowslip, crowbill, hartberry and snapdragon.
T. E. L. Moses, Sherborne, Dorset.
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