Culture, arts, politics : Italy in Ivan Meštrović’s and Bogdan Radica’s discourses between the two World War

In this article the activity and discourses of two Dalmatian public figures are taken into consideration: the sculptor Ivan Meštrović and the journalist Bogdan Radica. They both had an enormous influence on how the image of Italy was created and disseminated in Yugoslavia, in particular in the 1920s and 1930s. The analysis of their discourses is interpreted in terms of the concept of Dalmatia within a wider Mediterranean basin which also refers to two diverse conceptualizations of Yugoslavism, cultural and political. Meštrović’s vision of Dalmatia/Croatia/Yugoslavia was based on his rural hinterland idiom enabling him to embrace racial and cultural Yugoslavism. In contrast, Radica, in spite of having a pro-Yugoslav orientation during the same period, did not believe in race, so for him the idea of Croat-Serb unity was more a political issue (to a lesser extent a cultural one).