Gjura Stojana

Gjura Stojana (also known as George Curtin Stanson, George Stojana, and George Stanley) (1885–1974) was an American modernist painter and sculptor primarily identified with the Los Angeles-based modernist groups of the early 20th century.

Early life and move to the United States Gjura Stojana was born in 1885.

Early career in Los Angeles and Hawaii In 1917, he moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles. He formed a relationship with Elizabeth Rudolph, a teacher, with whom he lived at 3501 Dahlia Avenue in Los Angeles and had a child. Stojana primarily produced abstract art, a style that does not try to faithfully depict reality. Abstraction was not yet popular in Los Angeles at the time, and according to friend and peer Conrad Buff, his work was not commercially successful at first so his family lived primarily on his wife's wages. Buff, who first knew Stojana as George Stanley and described him as "quite a character", praised his early work and regarded him as "the first abstractionist in Los Angeles". He helped Stojana secure an exhibit at the Los Angeles Museum (which later split into the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, or LACMA, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County), but when the show had to be pushed back by two weeks, Stojana said he would refuse to participate. Buff pled with Stojana to accept the delay for fear his "temperamental" reaction would cause the museum to think all modern painters were difficult. Stojana agreed, and then left to spend six months in Hawaii without his family.

Return to Los Angeles Stojana returned to Los Angeles in 1920, set up a home studio at 5653 La Miranda Avenue, and became involved with the local modernist art communities. The organization held exhibitions at several Los Angeles locations, and Stojana served as president at some point in the 1920s. He was also close with photographers Edward Weston, Margrethe Mather, Tina Modotti, and Johan Hagemeyer. He created "Spirit of Sports" there in 1928, an Art Deco and Bauhaus-influenced fresco which incorporated plastic reliefs and wood strips.

Exhibitions

Going by George Curtin Stanson, Stojana exhibited at the New Mexico Museum of Art at least twice, first in 1917, the year the museum opened, and then in 1920. The Art Institute of Chicago had an exhibit in 1926 combining Stojana's paintings, drawings, and woodcarvings inspired by "primitive idolmakers", alongside the work of Rene Menard and William Ritschel.

He exhibited at the Los Angeles Museum several times, including exhibits in 1918, 1921, 1926, and in 1928. The 1926 event was called the First Pan American Exhibition of Oil Paintings and included Stojana's "Bali - Ceremony of Cremation" as well as a portrait of Stojana by Clarence Hinkle.

He had a solo exhibition at the California School of Fine Arts in March 1928, including his paintings and sculptures, that The Argus characterized as polarizing. While some reviewers have complimented the extent to which he integrated influences from Asian and Oceanic traditions, The Argus 's editor, Jehanne Bietry Salinger, said that feature of his work could "[give] the impression, at first contact, that he is lacking in originality, that he is superficial and boldly aggressive in his faculty of adaptation" but went on to say this impression is dispelled when looking more closely to appreciate the expressive content. She described his woodcarvings, conversely, as beautiful works of original design rather than expressive." The Municipal Employee described his work in the show as drawing "from sources in the South Seas, the Orient, and from his own theories of algebraic ornament, in still, rapid, and slow motion."

Stojana's had at least four pieces, including both paintings and wood carvings, in a 1929 Stendahl Galleries exhibition alongside Buff, Edouard Vysekal, Hinkle, and Haldane Douglas. His work in the show, which occupied an entire gallery, was positively received by Millier in the Los Angeles Times, who said he had "a rich gift able to turn in many directions". Millier went on to say the wood carvings in the show "[gave] full play to the artist's powers of design, his feelings for the richness of life, and his matured plastic sense". Mumford saw in his work Chinese-influence Picasso, Japanese-influenced Klee, and Congo-influenced Brancusi. the Smithsonian Archives of American Art, the Monterey Museum of Art, the De Young Museum, the Museum of Archaeology in Santa Fe, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Hagemeyer photographed him in 1930 (several of which are in a collection at the University of California Bancroft Library), and Hinkle painted a portrait in 1925, which is considered one of Hinkle's best and was displayed at the Los Angeles Museum in 1927.

He died in Los Angeles on September 16, 1974.