Slava Raškaj

In 1900, she first began showing signs of clinical depression and was hospitalized briefly before she returned to her family home. She did not recover and, in 1903, was admitted to the Psychiatric Hospital of Stenjevec with aggression and psychological issues.

In 1905, she contracted tuberculosis and stopped painting entirely. She died on March 29, 1906 at the age of 29.

She was buried in the Parish church lot outside of the Stenjevec Psychiatric Hospital. In 1990, her remains were transferred to the St. Vid Church in Ozalj.

She was born on January 2, 1877 at Ozalj, Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia, Austria–Hungary. Her mother Olga, who was also a painter, held the position of an administrator at the local post office. Her father Vjekoslav was also a local administrator which gave the family a high middle class status in Croatia.

Her sister Paula also learned painting from her mother but later became a school teacher in Orahovica.

In 1885, at the age of eight, she was enrolled by her family in a Vienna-based school for the deaf.

Being deaf from birth, Raškaj kept to herself as the beliefs of the time suggested that all deaf individuals were also mentally unsound. Her talent for painting separated her from her peers and attracted the attention of all her teachers.

In 1892, she received her first drawing lesson in Vienna, completing a small set of ink drawings entitled ‘Armor and Weapons I and II’. During this time, she learned watercolor painting and also the Gouache technique, an Italian opaque oil painting method.

In 1895, at the age of 15, she returned from Vienna, and her local school teacher Ivan Muha-Otoić insisted the family send her to Zagreb to train with Vlaho Bukovac. After arriving in Zagreb, Bukovac refused to train a woman, let alone a deaf woman.

While in Zagreb, she was invited by Isidor Kršnjavi to study at the Zagreb Institute for the Deaf where she set up her first studio.

The famous symbolism Croatian painter Bela Čikoš Sesija noticed her talent in 1896 and began training her at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb.

From 1896 to 1897, she studied craft drawing and technique with John Bauer and Stephen Hribar.

In 1898, her watercolor paintings were first publicly showcased at the newly opened Art Pavillion in Zagreb alongside other notable painters of the time like Menci Klement Crnčić and Vlaho Bukovac.

In 1900, her paintings were exhibited in Saint Petersburg and in Moscow.

In 1900, five of her paintings were part of the Exposition Universelle in Paris.