Slavko Brill (27 December 1900 – January 1943) was a Croatian-Jewish sculptor and ceramics artist born in

Nova Gradiška Nova Gradiška is a town located in the Brod-Posavina County of Croatia, population 14,229 (2011). It is located in the historic region of Slavonia, near the border to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The first word in the name means ''New'', and there' ...

. He graduated in 1926 at Art Academy in Zagreb. His artistic works included portraits, busts, and cemetery monuments. Kralj Tomislav

After the establishment of the

Independent State of Croatia The Independent State of Croatia ( sh, Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, NDH; german: Unabhängiger Staat Kroatien; it, Stato indipendente di Croazia) was a World War II-era puppet state of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. It was established in p ...

, Brill converted to Catholicism. He was arrested by the

Ustaše The Ustaše (), also known by anglicised versions Ustasha or Ustashe, was a Croatian fascist and ultranationalist organization active, as one organization, between 1929 and 1945, formally known as the Ustaša – Croatian Revolutionary Movem ...

in July 1941, and then quickly released after an intercession from the Gorica utensils factory, where he was employed. In January 1942 he was arrested with his wife and incarcerated in

Jasenovac concentration camp Jasenovac () was a concentration and extermination camp established in the Jasenovac, Sisak-Moslavina County, village of the same name by the authorities of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) in Invasion of Yugoslavia, occupied Yugosla ...

where he was forced to feature along with some other Jewish artists including

Daniel Ozmo Daniel Ozmo (14 March 1912 – 5 September 1942) was a Yugoslav Jewish painter and printmaker. He studied in Belgrade, where he became a member of the communist progressive youth movement. His paintings, other than of Sephardi Jewish life, port ...

and

Daniel Kabiljo Daniel Kabiljo (6 March 1894, Sarajevo – 1944, Jasenovac concentration camp) was a Yugoslav Jewish Sephardi artist. His lithographs of Sephardi life were published in 1924 but the originals are lost. His art was featured in a propaganda film ...

in a propaganda film. Brill worked for a while in the camp's ceramics workshop. He died from tuberculosis in January 1943. His wife and her mother perished in

Đakovo internment camp Đakovo was an internment camp for Jewish, and to a lesser extent Serb, women and children in the town of Đakovo in the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) that was operational between December 1941 and July 1942, during World War II. The camp ...

. Brill's works were posthumously featured in group exhibitions in Belgrade (1956–57) and Zagreb (1988, 1996 and 2000), as well as a retrospective exhibition in Zagreb in 2004. Approximately 30 of his gypsum sculptures are kept in the Glyptotheque of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts, and one of his portraits is kept in the

Modern Gallery, Zagreb Modern Gallery ( hr, Moderna galerija; since 2021 the National Museum of Modern Art, ) is a museum in Zagreb, Croatia that holds the most important and comprehensive collection of paintings, sculptures and drawings by 19th and 20th century Croati ...

. Some of his glazed ceramic statuettes, made in the Jasenovac concentration camp, are kept in the Jasenovac Memorial Area collection.

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Bibliography

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Brill, Slavko 19th-century Croatian sculptors 20th-century Croatian sculptors 1900 births 1943 deaths People from Nova Gradiška Austro-Hungarian Jews Croatian Austro-Hungarians People who died in Jasenovac concentration camp Croatian Jews who died in the Holocaust 20th-century deaths from tuberculosis Tuberculosis deaths in Croatia Converts to Roman Catholicism from Judaism