WAR MEMORIAL OF THE KRAJINA

Inaugurated in 1961, this massive white monument (Spomenik Palim Krajišnicima/Споменик Палим Крајишницима) honors the 64,000 Yugoslav partisans from Bosnian Krajina (the western part of Bosnia and Herzegovina) who fell during World War II. Made by the great sculptor Antun Augustinčić (1900-1979), it is placed on the hill of Banj (or Šehitluci), 431 m above sea level, which offers a splendid panorama of the Vrbas Valley, Banja Luka and the region. This monumental sculpture, 13 m high and 24 m long, is located on the site of a cottage where communist representatives of the various nationalities of Bosnia and Herzegovina made the decision to join the armed struggle against the Axis forces on June 8, 1941, about a month after the German invasion of the Balkans. From a distance, the monument depicts a naked man holding a flag, while the sides depict the fighting and the reconstruction of the country after the war.

A pioneering work. The work was designed by one of the greatest artists of socialist Yugoslavia, the Croatian Antun Augustinčić, who is credited with equestrian statues in Serbia, Croatia, Poland, but also the Peace Monument installed in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York since 1954. The sculptor began working on the monument to the Krajina partisans in 1948 and was strongly inspired by the Russian socialist realist movement. But due to the break between Tito and Stalin that same year, Augustinčić was led to distance himself from the artists of the USSR, influencing a new Yugoslav school with his approach. To realize the monument, the prestigious white stone from the Dalmatian island of Brač, Croatia, was chosen. This stone has been used in the construction of such famous monuments as Diocletian's Palace in Split and the White House in Washington. But it did not adapt well to the cold and wet winter climate of Banja Luka. By the mid-1960s, the monument was cracking, threatening to collapse. Since then, several phases of restoration and stabilization of the stone have been carried out, the last one in 2008. The crumbling now seems to have been stopped. However, moisture has spread to the interior, where the frescoes by the great Tuzla painter Ismet Mujezinović (1907-1984) have been permanently lost.