The exhibition dedicated to Milan Marjanović (Kastav (Castua) 1879 – Zagreb 1955), one of the most interesting protagonists in the history of the Croatian Littoral, was created as a result of many years of research by Ervin Dubrović. Marjanović was a person of extraordinary energy and passion – a journalist, politician, literary critic and writer.
As a member of the progressive Croatian youth, he fought against the Hungarians and Austria-Hungary, for the independence of Croatia, and later he saw the solution to Croatia’s future in the uniting of South Slavic peoples. Prior to World War I, he served in London as a member of the Yugoslav Committee, as well as the representative of the Committee in the United States and South America.
At the outbreak of the war, he was put under house arrest in Kastav, and was imprisoned for his ideas in Ljubljana and Zagreb. During World War II he was interned to Italy and imprisoned there.
He was engaged in literary writing, which led him to Greenwich Village, where he became the only performed Croatian playwright writer. In parallel, he acted as a literary from a realistic platform that opposes aesthetic ideas of A.G. Matoš. After WW2, he ran the Film Laboratory of the Andrija Štampar School of Public Health in Zagreb. In the fifties, he became president of the council of the JAZU (Yugoslav Academy of Science and Art) Adriatic Institute in Zagreb, and an academician.
His writing dealt with many topics, including contemporary economic as well as historical studies on Croatian-Italian relations in the Adriatic region and particularly in Rijeka. He maintained regular contacts with writers and intellectuals of the litoral region such as Ante Dukić, Drago Gervais, Rikard Katalinić Jeretov, Ante Mandić, Viktor Car Emin.
