International studio (58.1916)

A rts and Crafts

the profile the beautiful lines of this colonial
aristocrat. He has also produced unusually good
busts of Abraham Lincoln, Count Leo Tolstoy,
Cardinal Farley, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow
Wilson and Hudson Maxim.
Downtown in the Maiden Lane district, where
are to be found the most skilled artisans, Kratina
has many friends who speak with the greatest
enthusiasm of his great skill and the rapid deft-
ness of his perception and execution. He is a

setting its capturing meshes within reach. An-
other bust, Baby George, done in marble, looks up
at you with the most alluring expression.
The portrait heads of two young boys together,
about four and five years old, have the sweetness
of boyhood. Another boy—a study—gives the
feeling of a good working intellect. Indeed all
these little marbles and plasters have brains be-
hind their eyes and the ability to use their brains,
is there.

true artisan and an artist craftsman, for he ap-

In this exhibit, Mr. Kratina has a very rapidly

plies his skill to model-

made head of his own


ling of useful objects in
a decorative fashion.
This is the necessary
ground work for his
power as an artist.
These portrait busts
of vigorous men, are a
strong contrast to the
delicacy of feeling
shown in the exhibit of
children’s heads. In all
these little busts, Mr.
Kratina’s touch has the
tenderness of love. It
is as though Love had
been the medium
through which his in-
sight and deftness of
hand had passed. In
working, he forgets
himself and becomesr
only an interpreter or
the child before him.
His method is not to
work for one phase,
but for everything in
the child. It is the

baby at five days old;
there is another head
of one of his children at
six days, in which the
child’s character shows
itself in the way he uses
his tiny fingers in grab-
bing his flesh. This
child, now at six years
old, is a sculptor of
animals.
While the exhibition
is composed of many
types of children, there
is a certain sameness in
the method of handling.
They are all finished
beautifully. Perhaps if
some had been less fin-
ished, that is, a little
more left to the imagi-
nation, the exhibition
might have had more of
the vitality that comes
from variety.
The bronze paper
knives, with nude fig¬

assembling of various a portrait
phases that make the
character which he gets so admirably. Love is a
strong element in childhood and this he has put
into all the beautiful little portraits. They have
the deep expression of the eye, and the hope and
spiritual quality of childhood. Of the Baby Na-
poleon, Mr. Kratina says: “Napoleon for years
has been a pet of mine—a sort of god. It is for
that reason, perhaps, that I prefer to picture him
as a baby, so young and innocent, that that fright-
ful malady, ambition, which afterward ate away
the soul of the man, had not even considered

by joseph kratina ures emerging from dra-
peries, tend toward the
nouveau art in form and colour. These are finished
in various colours. The draperies running down
on the blade, are a natural greenish bronze, and
the nude bodies, a soft, rich, reddish brown.
The minute one tries to combine several colours
in sculpture, to represent flesh, hair and draperies,
the naturalistic begins to creep out in what seems
to be a more or less artificial manner. The model-
ling in itself should be so well done in texture and
feeling as to be sufficient in itself, without hav-
ing to add the flesh colour to explain the subject

LXII