Biography

Born to school teachers Olga and Stjepan in 1923 in Zagreb, Croatia (what was then the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), Marijan Kocković was the youngest of seven siblings. However, his father passed away before he was born, so he was mostly raised by his mother. He did his primary and secondary education in Zagreb at the school where his mother taught. Though, just as Kocković's schooling was completed, war broke out across the region in 1941 as the conflicts of WWII consumed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In 1942 he enlisted in the Partisan movement at the age of 19, slowly working his way up to the rank of 'political commissar' with one of the battalions of the 13th Proletariat Brigade. Interestingly, Kocković actually met Marshal Tito as a young Partisan soldier while in a field hospital in Croatia while Tito was visiting wounded fighters. As such, this meeting left Kocković with a strong attachment to Tito and the Partisan movement. By the end of WWII, Kocković had reached the rank of captain and had been wounded twice.

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After the war, Kocković served time in the Yugoslav Navy in Split. While stationed in that city, he was inspired by Split sculptor Ivan Mirković. As a result, in his late 20s he was granted a scholarship by the Navy to study with the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. There he trained under famous Croatian academic sculptors Frano Kršinić and Grga Antunac, learning the traditional figurative form of sculpture in the realist style. Kocković was so accomplished in his schooling that, as a student, he won a design competition for the "Monument to Fallen Fighters" in the city center of Sisak, Croatia, which was built in 1949. However, despite this early success, the commitment to completing his Sisak project resulted in Kocković neglecting portions of his academic obligations, and as a result, he was dismissed from the Zagreb's Academy of Fine Arts in 1950 for "disrespecting the student procedure". Kocković then transferred to the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he studied under professors Karel Putrich and Peter Loboda. He graduated in 1952.

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In 1953 Kocković began his tenure working as a professor of sculpture and history of art at the University of Sarajevo. During this time in Bosnia in the 1950s, Kocković went on to create several memorial sculptures across that region in the traditional figurative style, such as his works at Gacko and Vareš. Then, in the early and mid 1960s, he began to experiment with more non-traditional styles of figurative memorial sculpture, for example, exhibited in his works at Novi Grad (Bosanski Novi) and at Visoko. Also during this time he experimented with making small wooden totem sculptures reminiscent of native art. In 1961 Kocković created a monument to Anton Bučković in Rovinj which consisted of an angular head roughly hewn from stone which was very similar in spirit to the work he was creating in his small totem sculptures. This was the only monument in this unique style which he created.