Nada Marović Stanić

— born in 1931 in Luštica, Herceg Novi, she began her artistic education at the Art School in Cetinje in 1947 and graduated in 1957 from the School of Applied Arts in Herceg Novi, specializing in sculpture, where she later worked briefly as a teaching assistant. A member of the Association of Fine Artists of Montenegro from 1959, she exhibited regularly at its shows. Her first solo exhibition was held in 1962 at the Sponza Palace in Dubrovnik, followed by others in 1997 at the Reconciliation Hall on the Island of Our Lady of the Rocks in Perast and in 1998 at the Park Hall in Herceg Novi. She received the Montenegrin Art Salon “13 November” Award in 1969 and the Herceg Novi Winter Salon Award in 1976 and 1983. She passed away in Herceg Novi in 2012.

Nada Marović-Stanić, the first, and for a long time, the only, sculptress in Montenegro, developed a distinct and singular artistic poetics that positions her as one of the most significant older-generation artists in Montenegrin art. Though her oeuvre is not extensive, it represents an indispensable segment in the study of modernist sculpture in Montenegro. Despite its undeniable value, her work remains under-researched and under-recognized in Montenegrin art history, a fate shared by nearly all women artists of her time. She rarely exhibited, and her works, beyond collective shows, remained inaccessible to the broader public for decades, complicating their timely and consistent historicization.

Her artistic career began in the early 1960s, when the local milieu was resistant to the idea of women practicing sculpture—a discipline then considered almost exclusively a “male domain.” In this context, Nada was not only Montenegro’s first sculptress but also a long-isolated protagonist of this medium. As academic Tonko Maroević¹ noted, “In an epic environment, she was lyrical.” She primarily worked in stone, (patinated) plaster, and sandstone (siga), materials that lent her sculptures a distinctive morphology and softness, recognizable across her work. Thematically, human and animal figures dominate, while portraiture is rare (known exception is Portrait of Ivo Andrić1). She avoided monumental sculpture, likely due to the era’s societal constraints on women in this field.

Her human figures often depict women, embracing couples, and mothers with children2345.
Over time, her treatment of form evolved—from “extracting” shapes from stone blocks to subtle plaster modeling and patination, and finally to reduced incisions and relief-like suggestions in sandstone67. As she stated in an interview, even when working in plaster, she “thought in stone,” her preferred material.

Her sculptures carry an archaic quality, some seeming inspired by ancient civilizations, striving for archetypal, primal expression.”My sculptural forms are archaic. I feel as if I lifted them from nature. Look how surrounded we are by stone—this is Montenegro.”

They evoke the archaic spirit and Mediterranean creative currents. Her reduced, often merely hinted forms are remarkably suggestive, exuding both sturdiness and subtle grace8. Animal figures range from the stable, almost massive relief of Elephant9 to the melodic, elongated curves of cats10. Her works function as visual metaphors, avoiding narrative or descriptiveness. Closer to signs than representations, they accumulate into a typology emphasizing love, motherhood, friendship, devotion, and spirituality—cornerstones of her practice.

Marović-Stanić’s work uniquely intertwines tradition and modernist expression, merging archetypal forms with modernist tendencies. She admired Constantin Brâncuși’s engagement with the archaic and mythic through reduction, a pursuit she shared. Though aware of 20th-century avant-garde and modernist sculpture, her voice remains authentic—a synthesis of the ancient, modern, and local environment she cherished lifelong.

Though excluded from mainstream artistic currents to the extent her work deserved, Nada Marović-Stanić’s legacy remains an essential segment of Montenegro’s cultural heritage.

Materials collected and organized by Ana Ivanović.

1Image: Nada Marović Stanić, Portrait of Ivo Andrić, sandstone. Courtesy of Tomislav Stanić.

2Image: Nada Marović Stanić, Nude, plaster. Courtesy of Tomislav Stanić.

3Image: Nada Marović Stanić, A Girl with the Amphora, stone. Courtesy of Tomislav Stanić.

4Image: Nada Marović Stanić, Lovers, plaster. Courtesy of Tomislav Stanić.

5Image: Nada Marović Stanić, Boyfriend and Girlfriend, stone. Courtesy of Tomislav Stanić.

6Image: Nada Marović Stanić, Girl and the Cittern, 1980, sandstone. Courtesy of Tomislav Stanić.

7Image: Nada Marović Stanić, A Hug, sandstone. Courtesy of Tomislav Stanić.

8Image: Nada Marović Stanić, A Window, plaster. Courtesy of Tomislav Stanić.

9Image: Nada Marović Stanić, An Elephant, stone. Courtesy of Tomislav Stanić.

10Image: Nada Marović Stanić, The Cats, stone. Courtesy of Tomislav Stanić.

11Image: Nada Marović Stanić, The Sitting Nude, patinated plaster. Courtesy of Tomislav Stanić.

12Image: Nada Marović Stanić, Composition, sandstone. Courtesy of Tomislav Stanić.

13Image: Nada Marović Stanić, Young Girl with a Fawn, plaster, h 120cm. Courtesy of Duško Miljanić PI Museums and Galleries of Podgorica