Hear the symphony of the sea on the Dalmatian coast. I had a faint expectation of seeing Dalmatians on the Dalmatian coast. It’s cliché, I know, so I dared not mention it to anyone and certainly not to the woman serving me coffee on Trg Sv.Stosije square in Zadar. She was courteous and beautiful but with her heavy make-up and teased black hair, she resembled Cruella de Vil from  Disney’s “One Hundred and One Dalmatians” and appeared as though she’d moved from night into morning on just a nap. The history of the city can be seen in Trg Sv.Stosije square. Zadar, located on the Adriatic coast of Croatia, is that kind of place. Everyone’s laid back. One might call Zadar staid and sedate if only visited in the daytime. But with thousands of students and a pleasant, cool sea breeze in the evening, the city really comes alive after 10 p.m. “Ciao!” I hear an elderly man beckon across the market. The Italian influence is still felt in Dalmatia but especially among the older generation. From 1921 until WWII, most of the Adriatic coast was in Italian hands. “Dober vecer,” answers another, good evening, before they shake hands. “Dober vecer” was Ante’s greeting to us, too, when he collected guests for his walking tour. We joined him through the maze of Zadar’s streets. Zadar is a compact city, with its historic core spread out on a peninsula. Ante tells of WWII bombings and the reconstruction under communism. He admits it’s easy for younger Croats like him to talk about Tito since few really remember what life was like under the dictator of former Yugoslavia, which Zadar was then part of. However, they’re left with his legacy of lethargy. Tito apparently felt little affinity with Zadar and some say he erected ugly post-war buildings on purpose. To be fair, many European cities have those scars, reflecting a time when planners enforced order by wiping away history’s messiness. Today, Zadar is anything but a mess. The various layers of its history are cleaned up and distinctly visible. The main Forum square has proud Roman columns, a robust Romanesque church, Renaissance facades and a ’60s office building — the strictness of which is actually a perfect complement to the roundness of Romanesque Saint Donat. Terrace cafés serving maraschinos, a cherry liqueur produced in Zadar since the 16th century, provide great views onto the assembled architectural treasures. The stones of the monuments are like buttermilk, creamy in color with a translucent sheen. The creamy paving stones of the narrow streets are a welcome retreat in the heat of the Adriatic sun. In the 19th century Zadar became popular with the British upper classes who came to bask in the sunshine and build villas. They also discovered the Dalmatian dog and groomed it to their Kennel Club standards. Alfred Hitchcock visited often and it’s been claimed that the birds of Zadar inspired his film. There are indeed a lot of seagulls because historic Zadar is surrounded on three sides by water, with a footbridge connecting it to the mainland. With the exception of the Forum, most of the city’s squares are intimate and enclosed. The creamy paving stones of the narrow streets are a welcome retreat in the heat of the Adriatic sun. A huge defensive wall closes off the northern waterfront facing the mainland. Often, a line-up of cars waits to embark on the ferries to the many islands. In the last decade the city centre has been restored, including the southern waterfront, which received a special, contemporary upgrading. The city is a great mixture of historic details, such as the stylized stone pig peeking through the gap between the Cathedral of St. Anastasia and a neighboring palace. If there’s one commercial venture they’ve latched onto in Croatia, it’s selling art to tourists on the streets and in their beautiful old buildings. Modern art of an entirely different order is Nikola Basic’s landscape art on the seaside promenade. As I approached the end of the promenade I thought I was hearing a CD of New Age music—there were plenty of young students and alternatives to match the assumption. I then realized it was a non-stop symphony of the sea that never plays the same score twice. By constructing concrete shafts in the paving stones, Basic, along with expert stone carvers, created The Sea Organ, allowing the sea to make music. The movement of waves beneath the paving and the slither of wind that circulates between water and concrete create windy melodies, similar to a pan flute but deeper in timbre. It is an incredibly impressive and wondrous thing. A seaside symphony is created by Nikola Basic’s landscape art on the promenade at sunset. Since its completion, the promenade has became the place to sit and hang out, either to swim or to lounge on the steps descending to water level. I watched the sun set into the hazy blue-green hills of the Adriatic islands while dangling my toes in the water for nearly an hour. Toward the evening it became increasingly busier with families and tourists and even, just before I left—you’re not going to believe it—a Dalmatian. Owned by an English couple. If You Go Croatia Tourism www.croatia-official.com Croatian National Tourist Board www.croatia.hr Dianna Beaufort is a freelance writer with a background in historic preservation and tourism. She writes on travel, history and the built environment. Her website is www.wordsontherun.nl

Related Articles

• Darjeeling: India’s Treasure of the Hills
• Roads to Freedom: Solidarity in Gdansk
• Travel in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Emerging from Ruins
• A Weekend in San Antonio, Texas
• Water World: Bangkok by Boat

Yet the sculptor is nowhere to be found, and the villa is run by his sons.

Maro and Neven Kockovic are rebuilding – rebuilding their home and lives in Dubrovnik, and rebuilding their father’s legacy as an artist. It’s hard to say which is the most challenging. Maro, 25, and Neven, 24, lost both of their parents just a few months before Croatia declared its independence in 1991. Both events forced them to leave their home, a large villa filled with the sculptures created by their famous father, artist Marijan Kockovic.

Maro Kockovic, age 25, runs a TV commercial production company.

Maro, 25, now lives in Dubrovnik and runs a television commercial production company, while Neven, 24, studies double bass at the Academy in Skopje, Macedonia. Even as Croatia refashions itself after war, Croatia’s artists are also re-emerging. But the only collected exhibit of the man who sculpted over 300 pieces and fashioned 250 tapestries is in the garden of the Villa Marijan.

“His work has been sleeping for almost 15 years,” Neven Kockovic, Mr. Kockovic’s younger son, says. “To many young artists, his work is yet unknown, but we plan to change that.”

Marijan Kockovic sculpted busts of President John F. Kennedy , Josef Broz Tito and Yul Bryner. Sophia Loren bought some of his works, and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton visited his villa when they were in Dubrovnik filming a bio-epic of Tito’s life. He created works for the Sears Tower and hotels and factories around the world.

Marijan Kockovic was known simply as “Marijan of Dubrovnik” during a 45-year career that ended with his suicide in 1991. Since then, Croatia has become an independent country, and Croatian artists are once again exhibiting their works. Yet Marijan is no longer well known, even in his home country.

Maro and Neven are working to change that.

Neven Kockovic, 24, is a musician studying double bass at the Academy in Skopje, Macedonia.

Born in Zagreb in 1923, Marijan Kockovic fought in World War II, serving aboard a US PT boat and as a captain in the British Navy during that time. After the war, he attended the Fine Arts Academy in Ljubljana and taught there and in Sarajevo before moving to Dubrovnik. He gathered many honors during his career, including receiving the title of academician in Italy, for his achievements in the field of art, Maro says.

But then came the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. Just as the war between the regions was breaking out, tragedy also struck the Kockovic family. Marijan committed suicide in his home on May 30 1991, one day before his wife, Slobodanka Djokic-Kockovic, also an artist, died after a prolonged battle with cancer. Slobodanka Djokic-Kockovic had been in a coma for six days before dying. Maro was 14 and Neven was 13 at the time. One month later, Croatia declared its independence.

“We had our school break for summer, and we had time to get a grip and to think about what was best for us,” Maro says. “You can imagine what I could decide when I was 14 years old, and that was almost nothing, except the fact that I wanted to stay in Dubrovnik in our house.

Between September 1991 and 1993, Maro and Neven lived with their mother’s sister in Nis, Serbia.

“Since none of our relatives were living [in Dubrovnik], we had to choose. We could go to orphanage or to go to our aunt’s place in Nis, Serbia,” Maro says. “We didn’t want to go to [an] orphanage.”

Maro and Neven returned in 1993 after persuading the Croatian ambassador to Hungary – who coincidentally knew their father — to give them an entrance visa back into their country. Maro and Neven are now hoping to recapture some of their father’s prominence to assure his legacy.

Dubrovnik is once again the “jewel of the Adriatic,” with lovingly repaired terracotta roofs on the houses within the Old Town.

“Young artists are not familiar with ‘Marijan’s’ art,” Neven says. “People need to be reminded, and that is what we are trying to accomplish.”

Although both sons regret the 11 years that elapsed between their parents’ death and their new efforts, the young men were busy reconstructing their own lives after the war.

“Some of the guilt for that belongs to us, but most on the situation that we were in,” Maro says. “The main problem of Marijan’s name being forgotten is that we were too young to work on his heritage or to continue with art business, and the time passed quickly. We had to run our own lives.”

Currently, the Kockovics rent out rooms in their house to visitors, taking advantage of the surge in tourist trade. The city of Dubrovnik has once again retaken its position as jewel of the Adriatic, but signs of the war remain. Shrapnel and shell marks dot stone walls and pit streets in places, while new tiles in the city’s famous tile roofs are of a different shade of terracotta.

The contrast between the new and old tiles testifies to the fact that more than 68 percent of the old city was destroyed during the bombing of the city between 1991 and 1992. About $55,000 worth of damage was done to the house during the war and in a 1995 earthquake, Maro says.

Just as the city has been rebuilt, Kockovic’s sons are rebuilding Marijan’s reputation. The artist’s atelier has been reopened, and Neven and Maro plan to reestablish relationships with academic institutions.

One of Kockovic’s sculptures on display in the gardens beside the villa.

“We will contact some big art colleges in the world about projects of summer schools, seminars and workshops in the villa Marijan, so artists from all around the world can be surrounded with 50 statues in the garden gallery and atelier and can work in the right ambience during their vacations,” Neven says.

But just as Croatia is coming to terms with its past, art, and artists’ roles during the Tito years are being examined, with some being judged as political exponents. In 1978, Tito posed for the artist four times during 1978, and Marijan made seven busts in marble “with Tito’s blessing,” Neven says.

One bust was given to Tito on his birthday 1978, while two of those seven are in the family’s possession. One of the two is on display, nestled into the green shrubs near the villa’s main entrance.

Neither brother thinks their father’s current anonymity is linked to his work during the years of the Yugoslav federation, including the sculptures of Tito, but Maro admits that there are lingering tensions.

“Some of the people are not happy because Tito was a friend of our father, and he visited the house and posed for him,” Maro says. “We are not afraid, and we are willing to work with his heritage because he was an artist and not a politician.”

Looking outside of Croatia, Maro and Neven would also like to see another international tour for their father’s artwork. Marijan toured the United States extensively over his 35-year career, with exhibits in Philadelphia, New York and Washington DC, among other locations. He also ran a summer program in sculpture in Dubrovnik in 1972 for Hope College of Holland, Michigan.

Marijan Kockovic called Dubrovnik “pure energy.” It’s hard to disagree, given this view of the Adriatic Sea from the villa’s balcony.

“We plan to contact some big art philanthropists, some galleries and some of the celebrities [Kockovic knew] that are still alive to help organize an art expo-show,” Neven says. “We hope in time those traveling exhibitions will become self-maintained.”

But even as the young men consider exhibitions abroad, the goal is to bring people to the artist’s home city of Dubrovnik, which both sons love, as their father did.

“He did [a] lot of things for Dubrovnik, which he loved the most,” says Maro. “He used to call it ‘pure energy,’ and I agree with him. It’s such a beautiful town with such a unique local population.”

Related Articles

• Zadar, Croatia: A Day on the Dalmatian Coast