Statue of Petrica Kerempuh in Dolac

Meaning

The name is derived from the dialectical word kerempuh, meaning ‘belly’, ‘offal’, or ‘abdomen’, with a figurative meaning suggesting a person of cunning or a merrymaker.

In Literature

Petrica Kerempuh is another fictional character living in the collective memory who has earned his monument. Petrica is a folk entertainer and jester who entered literature from folk works.

He’s the Zagorje version of the Flemish Till Eulenspiegel and the Hungarian Mátyás Garabonciás Diák, characters from medieval folk tales.

In Varaždin, in 1834, Jakob Lovrenčić published the book Petrica Kerempuh iliti čini i življenje človeka prokšenoga (‘Petrica Kerempuh or the Life of a Prodigal Man’), which is a translation of a German book about the adventures of Till Eulenspiegel, while Tituš Brezovački adapted the Hungarian version of the same character, Mátyás Grabancijaš Diák.

However, Petrica is best known from Miroslav Krleža‘s “Ballads of Petrica Kerempuh” from 1936. Through the character of Petrica Kerempuh, Krleža sang of resistance to the age-old oppression of the people.

However, he also appears in Dragutin Domjanić‘s lesser-known puppet play Petrica Kerempuh i spametni osel (‘Petrica Kerempuh and the Smart Ass’). In the play, the author critically and satirically describes Croatian intellectuals of the 1920s. The play had its premiere on April 8, 1920, at the Zagreb Marionette Theater. The book of the same name was published a year later. The author signed it with the pseudonym Vujec Grga.

It should also be noted that August Šenoa signed some of his essays under the pseudonym Petrica Kerempuh, and Marija Jurić Zagorka also used this pseudonym when she published humoresques and satires in newspapers.

About the Monument’s Author

Vanja Radauš is one of the most significant protagonists of Croatian visual art in the 20th century. He graduated in sculpture in 1930 from the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts under Ivan Meštrović. In his early period, he created under the influence of Rodin and Bourdelle. In 1932, he became a member of the Zemlja group, and in 1950, along with Vojin Bakić, Kosta Angeli Radovani, and Zoran Mušič, he represented Yugoslavia at the Venice Biennale.