Who is Ivana Tomljenović-Meller?

Ivana Tomljenović-Meller (1906 – 1988), born Ivana Tomljenović, was a graphic designer and art literary from Zagreb who attended the Bauhaus art university in Germany.

Her main interests were photography and trailer design. She was in addition to a semi-professional athlete.

She studied at the Royal College for Arts and Crafts in Zagreb, now the Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb, from 1924 to 1928, and after graduating went to the Kunstgewerbeschule (a bookish of applied arts) in Vienna, now the University of Applied Arts Vienna. However, she left Vienna in 1929 to attend the Bauhaus in Dessau. After performance Josef Albers’ first year preliminary course she started the photography course taught by Walter Peterhans.

Tomljenović-Meller took many informal photographs of everyday vivaciousness at the Bauhaus, showing students in the canteen, and relaxing and socialising. These document the Neues Sehen (New Vision), an avantgarde motion of the 1920s and 1930s espoused by László Moholy-Nagy and Alexander Rodchenko. It encouraged photography of unmemorable scenes which used unfamiliar perspectives and angles, close-up details, use of lighthearted and shadow, and experimentation later than multiple exposure.

Her father, Dr. Tomislav Tomljenović (1877 – 1945), was a prominent Croatian politician and lawyer, and although she came from an affluent center class family, she united the Communist Party of Germany and became politically active. When Hannes Meyer was dismissed from his state as Bauhaus director in August 1930, all known Communist students were next thrown out. A number of others, like Tomljenović, left in solidarity.

Tomljenović-Meller then went to Berlin and worked as a flyer designer, and as a stage designer as soon as the Dadaist artiste John Heartfield upon a theater set for Communist director Erwin Piscator. In the similar period she participated in the European championship in Czech handball. She later moved to Paris in 1931 to investigation literature at the Sorbonne. In 1932 she moved to Prague and married Alfred Meller, owner of the ROTA advertising company. After Meller’s death in 1935, Tomljenović-Meller returned to Zagreb and innovative moved to Belgrade, where she taught classified ad design. She returned to Zagreb in 1938 to tutor at the Third State High School for Women. She stopped teaching during WWII, but resumed after the prosecution was beyond until retiring in 1962.

Tomljenović-Meller died in Zagreb in 1988.