Ivan Mestrovic grew up in a rural mountain village in Croatia. He was apprenticed to a stonecutter before attending the Academy of Art in Vienna, where his work attracted the notice of the Vienna Secessionists, who favored modern art and architecture. Mestrovic taught sculpture at the Syracuse University School of Art in New York and at Notre Dame University in South Bend, Indiana, where he died in 1962. He bequeathed his works to the Croatian people and was buried at the Most Holy Redeemer Church, which he had built in Otavice, in Croatia-Slovenia.