Miroslav Kraljević
(Gospić, 14 December 1885 –
Miroslav Kraljević was born on 14 December 1885 in Gospić. After high school in Zagreb (1898-1902) and Gospić (1902-1904), in the autumn of 1904 he set out to study law in Vienna and joined the private course in panting with Georg Fischoff. Two years later, he quit law school and relocated to Munich, where he studied at the private school for graphic arts with professor Moritz Heymann from October 1906 to April 1907. In May 1907 he enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, under professor Hugo von Habermann, and sojourned in Venice in the summer of 1909. After graduating in Munich in 1910, he returned to his family in Požega. In September 1911 he set out to Paris, to remain until October 1912, studying for a brief period at Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Upon leaving the academy, he started painting independently, first in Meštrović’s, then his own studio in Montparnasse. Occasionally he published cartoons in the satirical magazine Panurge. In the autumn of 1912, he returned to Zagreb. At the Ullrich Salon he had his first and, during his lifetime, only solo exhibition. An advanced stage of tuberculosis, from which he suffered for years, forced him to undertake treatment in early 1913 in the Brestovac sanatorium. He died on 16 April 1913 in the Kraljević family apartment in Zagreb and was buried in the family tomb at St Ilija cemetery in Požega.
*Self-portrait, 1909
pencil
111 x 82 mm; paper
sign. none
inv. no. KG HAZU 6171