Lot 181: f - Petar Pallavicini Croatian, 1888-1958 , a seated female nude

signed: PALLAVICINI Brac stone

measurements note 89.5cm., 35¼in.

Petar Pallavicini, also known as Petrus Palavicini, was born on the island of Korcula in Dalmatia, Croatia in 1888, of probable Italian-Venetian descent. As a subject of the Austro-Hungarian empire he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague in 1912, studying under Horice. The following year at the age of 25 he became an independent artist. Pallavicini's first exhibition in the newly liberated Yugoslavia came in Zagreb in 1920 and soon after he moved to Belgrade where he became Professor of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts. He travelled widely and exhibited in Paris, Barcelona and London where a held a one-man show in 1930.

Pallavicini never forgot his roots and many of his works are carved in stone and marble quarried from Dalmatia, notably the island of Brac (as in the present case). After 1945 he carved the memorial to the fallen of the Second World War on the island of Raciste. In Belgrade he executed the tombs of Matija Ban, Stevan Todorovic and Stevan Mokranjac.

Pallavicini belongs to a group of highly original and inspiring sculptors from Dalmatia which includes the likes of Ivan Mestrovic and Toma Rosandic.