Life Begins at 70

When Sculptor Ivan Mestrovic was once asked how he spent his spare time, he looked puzzled for a moment, then blurted a characteristic answer. "Work," he said, and turned back to the job at hand. Mestrovic is a sculptor of the old school, and he goes at it with a blazing intensity; he has been known to do as many as nine major works plus a score of minor pieces in a single year. The results of such industry have been so successful that six years ago Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art honored him with the only one-man show of a living artist in the museum's history. Last week, nearing his 70th birthday and still going strong, the grizzled old sculptor served notice that time had dulled neither his vigor nor his artistry.

Three mornings a week he leaves his home in Syracuse, N.Y. to teach at Syracuse University. The rest of the time he pads about in beret and white smock, puffing king-sized cigarettes and working furiously at a whole array of statues. For the University of Vienna, Mestrovic is modeling a portrait bust in plaster of the famed Croatian scholar, Vatroslav Jagic (1838-1923); he has just shipped off a 6-ft. bronze of St. Anthony for Oxford University; and he is working on a full-scale model of a statue as a gift for the people of his homeland, honoring Montenegro's 19th century poet and prince-bishop, Petar Njegos. Mestrovic's plans call for a pensive figure in grey granite above Njegos' mountaintop grave; there will be a chapel, too, and Mestrovic has already sent over the designs for approval.

Such a work load would be more than enough for most sculptors. But Mestrovic also has another and even bigger project. The Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn, has asked him to decorate the fagade of its new diagnostic building, and Mestrovic has answered with a typically herculean work. To be cast in gleaming bronze, it is a straight-backed figure of a young man straining to reach the sky--28 feet from tiptoe to fingertip. Mestrovic calls the statue Man and Freedom, and into its graceful, classical pose he has poured the philosophy that guides him through his work. Says he: "Sculpture and art in general should contribute to human civilization, to human progress and mankind's spiritual development. In my opinion, 'abstract in art' is only another slogan. All great art must be expressed within the limits of form. As thought must be expressed in form, so the craftsmanship of 'the artist must be subjected to the discipline of honest workmanship."

A good many knowing art lovers agree with the old master, a fact that was proved recently when the American Academy of Arts & Letters announced a handsome present for Ivan Mestrovic in his 70th year: the academy's Award of Merit and a $1,000 prize as an outstanding U.S. sculptor. They want him to come to Manhattan later this month and pick it up--if he can bear to put down his busy chisel for that long.

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