Josip Crnobori

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Josip Crnobori was a Croatian painter. He was born on 22 October 1907 near Pula in Istria. His family moved to Vienna in 1915, where he attended primary school. In 1925 he moved to Zagreb and finished art school in 1936. His first solo exhibition came in 1937 at the Meštrović Pavilion, titled Pola vijeka hrvatske umjetnosti (Half a Century of Croatian Art). In 1942 his work was shown at the Venice Biennale. During World War II he had exhibitions in Berlin, Vienna and Bratislava. He painted a portrait of the Croatian leader Ante Pavelić at his request, which Pavelić later declined. In 1946 Crnobori left Communist Yugoslavia and went to Italy. The following year he moved to Argentina, where he lived until 1978. He then moved to New York City, where he painted Milka Trnina for the Metropolitan Opera and left several works for Croats abroad. Crnobori returned to Croatia in 1999 and died in Zagreb on 12 August 2005, aged 97.