Ivan Meštrović, Croatian sculptor and architect, designed the Monument to the Unknown Hero (born 1883)

Ivan Meštrović was a Croatian and Yugoslav sculptor, architect, and writer. He was the most prominent modern Croatian sculptor and a leading artistic personality in contemporary Zagreb. He studied at Pavao Bilinić's Stone Workshop in Split and at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where he was formed under the influence of the Secession. He traveled throughout Europe and studied the works of ancient and Renaissance masters, especially Michelangelo, and French sculptors Auguste Rodin, Antoine Bourdelle and Aristide Maillol. He was the initiator of the national-romantic group Medulić. During the First World War, he lived in emigration. After the war, he returned to Croatia and began a long and fruitful period of sculpture and pedagogical work. In 1942 he emigrated to Italy, in 1943 to Switzerland and in 1947 to the United States. He was a professor of sculpture at the Syracuse University and from 1955 at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana.

The Monument to the Unknown Hero is a World War I memorial located atop Mount Avala, south-east of Belgrade, Serbia, and designed by the sculptor Ivan Meštrović. The memorial was built in 1934–1938 on the place where an unknown Serbian World War I soldier was buried. It is similar to many other tombs of the unknown soldier built by the allies after the war. The Žrnov fortress was previously located on the same place.