Frano Kršinić

Who was Frano Kršinić?

Frano Kršinić was a renowned Croatian sculptor. Along with Ivan Meštrović and Antun Augustinčić he is considered one of the three most important Croatian sculptors of the 20th century. His most widely known work is the statue of Nikola Tesla installed at the Niagara Falls State Park, United States and an identical copy of the monument in front the building of the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade.

Kršinić was born in 1897 in the village of Lumbarda on the Adriatic island of Korčula in south Croatia, which was at the time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was born into a family with a long tradition of stonemasonry, and he was also trained at the local stonemasonry school before going on to attend the stone-working and masonry school in Hořice in 1912. Upon graduation in 1916 he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, where he studied in the classes of renowned Czech sculptors Josef Václav Myslbek and Jan Štursa and graduated in 1920. He then returned to Croatia and settled in Zagreb, where he worked as a freelance sculptor before becoming a teacher of sculpting at the Academy of Fine Arts Zagreb in 1924.