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Designers & Creators Directory

Ana Bešlić

(AH-na BESH-lich)

Birthplace: Bajmok, Serbia

Heritage: Bunjevac/Croat

Date born: March 16th, 1912

Date deceased: February 27th, 2008

Education: Academy of Fine Arts, Belgrade (graduated 1947)

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(Ана Бешлић)

Biography

Educated in Zagreb, Graz and Vienna, Bešlić was a pioneering modernist sculptor who was hugely influential on the Yugoslav art scene through the 1950s and 1960s. She was schooled Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade along other soon-to-be notable figures in the Yugoslav art world such as Jovan Soldatović and Ante Gržetić. Getting her education under Prof. Jerolim Mišea of Zagreb and Prof. Toma Rosandić of Belgrade, the style which Bešlić primarily focused on in her work was free-formed, organic and streamlined modernism, where she reduced the minimal expressions of dimensional 'drawing' to a spatial form that stands as her trademark style of interpretive representation. In fact, many of her works seem to be deep studies of the female form, very much evoking qualities of the American painter Georgia O'Keeffe. Bešlić had such an interest in American art and music that she went as far as to dedicate a 1979 sculpture that she made to the female pop R&B singer Tina Turner.

 

A work of hers from 1957 called 'Wings', located at Palić Park in Subotica, Serbia (not far from her home town) could be argued to be one of the earliest modernist public sculptures in Yugoslavia. A significant number of her works were public space commemorative monuments, spread across eastern Europe. She remained active through her life, winning numerous awards and accolades. Another culturally significant work that Bešlić created during her career was a collaborative memorial piece she made with Nandor Glid in 1965 titled "Monument to the Victims of Nazism", which was located at the central memorial space at Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany. Bešlić passed away in Belgrade in 2008 at the age of 95.

Works by this Designer:

This is a listing of a number of memorials, monuments, cultural centers and other notable Yugoslav-era civic works by Ana Bešlić. Those sites listed in the upper part of this section have profile pages, while those listed in the lower part do not yet have completed profile pages. This list also includes non-Yugoslav projects that Bešlić created, as well as her unrealized works for which models only exist for. This list is not exhaustive and will be added to over time.

Yugoslav Works with profile pages:

Click photos to go to page

Zlatibor, SRB

Name: Monument on Šumatno Hill

Year: completed 1967, w/ Jovanka Jeftanović

Yugoslav Works without profile pages:

Bajmok, SRB

Name: Torch of Remembrance

Year: completed 1971

Location: N45°58'01.5", E19°25'25.5"

Subotica, SRB

Name: 'Wings' at Palić Park

Year: completed 1957

Location: N46°05'49.8", E19°45'36.7"

Subotica, SRB

Name: 'Mother & Child', Mon. Vict. of Fascism

Year: completed 1955

Location: N46°04'20.0", E19°40'46.5"

International Works without profile pages:

Dachau, Germany

Name: Monument to the Victims of Nazism

Year: completed 1965, w/ Nandor Glid

Location: N48°16'05.6", E11°28'07.3"

Unrealized Memorial Projects

This section contains a listing of design proposals for various memorial projects that were submitted to competitions for consideration, but were ultimately NOT the final proposals chosen by the selection juries for the memorial projects they were submitted for. Below each photo is detailed the monument project it was submitted for, as well as the year it was submitted in.

Belgrade, SRB

Name: concept for the Jajinci Memorial Park

Year: proposed 1978, w/ Jovanka Jeftanović