Famous Croats

Marin Getaldić

Marin Getaldić (Marino Ghetaldi) is considered to be the most important Croatian mathematician and physicist from the turn of the 17th century. He is a member of the group of Croatian scientists from the famous Republic of Ragusa that, with its organisation and power, enabled science and culture to flourish in accordance with the movements in the rest of Europe undergoing renaissance. Getaldić created the parabolic reflector with a two meter circumference allowing its focus point to reach up to 1500 °C. Nowadays, it can be seen at the National Maritime Museum in London. Bete was Getaldić's nickname and the Betina Cave near Dubrovnik, where he performed his experiments, was named after him. He knew many distinguished scientists of his era and was friends with François Viète, a French mathematician, making a significant contribution to the development of his algebra method. He also regularly exchanged letters with Galileo Galilei, an Italian mathematician, physicist and astronomer.

Marin Getaldić was born on October 2nd, 1568 in a reputable family of nobles. Their roots and role in the public, cultural and scientific life of Dubrovnik lasted for eight centuries. He gained his elementary education with the Franciscans and then went on to the Dubrovnik High School that, with its organisation and numerous lecturers from Italian scientific and cultural centres, was at a high level. After he completed his education, he started earning his living working for the Republic of Ragusa. An especially important moment in his life occurred in 1595 when he went on a trip that lasted several years during which he visited numerous European science centres and connected with many scientists. He returned to Dubrovnik in 1603 and took on public duties with high responsibilities that prevented him from keeping up with the newest scientific events to the extent he wanted to.

He published seven works with Mathematical Analysis and Synthesis being one of the most important ones. In it, Getaldić, correctly recognising the importance of Viète's work, became involved in development of algebra leading to its fundamental reform approaching establishment of analytical geometry.

He got married rather late in life, at the age of 53, to Marija Sorkočević with whom he had three daughters. Unfortunately, Marija died shortly after giving birth. Marin Getaldić, grief stricken and weakened by illnesses, died in 1626 only five years after the wedding.

Osor Slaven Barišić, PhD, Institute of Physics

Nives Kavurić-Kurtović

Nives Kavurić-Kurtović is one of the greatest names of modern Croatian arts. She was born in Zagreb in 1938. Her father, Zvonimir Kavurić, was a prominent architect who cooperated with Le Corbusier. She spent her entire life in the house her father built, in Cvjetno naselje. He was an idealist of human rights and social justice. He and his brother were both executed by the Ustashe regime. Ulica braće Kavurića (Kavurić Brothers Street) was named after them and then renamed to something else. Nives Kavurić-Kurtović kept a distance from everything public and never referred to those facts. She received her degree from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in 1962 under the guidance of Professor Fran Baće. For the next five years she cooperated with the Master Classes of Krsto Hegedušić. Until 1983 she lived as a freelance artist and then became a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1997 she became a regular member of the CASA. She passed away in Zagreb in 2016.

She was incomparable to others as she dodged all group definitions. Her most real space was mental space that she painted and wrote about ruthlessly printing out her life. This is how she realised an opus that is an autobiography in each sense of the word. She was her own source and her own comment. She had the ability to see shapes “prior to the creation of the world“, hesitation of their creation, their escape from completeness, their endless metamorphosis. Surrealism was sometimes brought up when her paintings were being mentioned. However, everything she painted or wrote about – because the media of pictures and words were mutual and inseparable, so the lines often unravelled into a letter (of authentic literal value) – it was very “credible“. Except she marked the invisible world of the interior, floating, levitating world of some fertile water that crystallised from a picture to a word and vice versa. Colours, never raw, mixed with white, followed the temperature of the spirit and the line, from gentle swaying to dramatic sharpness, was the painter's cardiogram. Human and animal figures, their pre-formations and deformations, filled the weightless sphere, space without dimensions. In her last ink drawings, dense blackness weaving dominated replacing/muting all colours. In huge painted scrolls, tens of meters long, “rolls of life“, Nives' time unravelled. All her characters tested the distances between beings, instability of emotions, distortion of certainty.

Insights and shapes that cannot be repeated, unique hand – interior world coordination, freedom of association, organic dialogue of two media, almost magical mediation of a child's joy, permanent wonder and clear bitterness secure Nives Kavurić-Kurtović a high and permanent place in the history of Croatian art, in the memory of a nation and in the definition of a more noble world.

Željka Čorak, Ph.D., Scientific Advisor – Emeritus at the Institute of Art History

Petar Preradović

Petar Preradović (Grabrovnica near Grubišno Polje, March 19th, 1818 – Fahrafeld, Austria, Aug. 18th, 1872) is the most important poet of the Croatian National Revival and the first great poet name of the newer Croatian literature. Even though he had been declared a bard during his life, Preradović joined the Illyrian movement relatively late, once the rebirth entered its final phase. He dedicated himself to a military career and began studies at the military school in Bjelovar and then graduated from the military academy in Wiener Neustadt. He served in garrisons all across the Austrian Empire (Pest, Milan, Glina, Postojna, Cremona, Vienna, Timisoara, Arad). He gradually advanced through the military hierarchy and attained the rank of a general at the end of his career.

Since he spent so much time living abroad, he nearly forgot his native language. However, in 1840 in Milan he met with Ivan Kukuljević Sakcinski, a prominent Illyrian, who sparked the patriotic fire within him. Persuaded by him, Preradović – who had been writing verses up to that point but in German – translated Gundulić's Osman and poems by Mácha, a Czech romanticist.

He started writing the first Croatian verses once he relocated to Zadar in 1843, and he achieved a sensational success with his reveille entitled Zora puca published in 1844 in the first edition of the new magazine Zora dalmatinska. This was followed by a fruitful period of creation during which Preradović cooperated with all important Croatian literature magazines. He published his first collection of romantic verses entitled Prvenci in Zadar in 1846, and in 1851, after being transferred to Zagreb, he published his collection entitled Nove pjesme. Quite often, he would write his verses in German and then translate them into Croatian and fine-tune them with the assistance of his friend, Ivan Trnski.

Preradović divided his poetry into four groups according to the thematic criteria: patriotic, love and various songs (general themes and reflexive lyrics). He called the songs he translated from foreign languages “tuđinke”. Even though he won the audience of that time with his patriotic lyrics and songs that became an integral part of the national romantic repertoire (Putnik, Djed i unuk, Na Grobniku, Rodu o jeziku, Jezik roda moga), he also wrote several melancholic love songs full of emotions in neo-Petrarchism style. Some of them have entered all anthologies of the Croatian poetry (Mrtva ljubav), while some were made into songs and continued to exist as an integral part of the urban culture (Miruj, miruj srce moje). He also wrote several reflexive songs broadening the horizons of the Croatian poetry with the themes of tragic human existence, questions regarding faith, God, death, future of the human kind (Smrt, Ljudsko srce, Bogu, Prvi ljudi).

Preradović passed away in Fahrafeld in Austria and was buried in Vienna. His remains were transferred to Zagreb in 1879.

Krešimir Nemec, PhD, CASA