Oscars 2024: The statuette’s Croatian connection

by croatiaweek
March 10, 2024
in News

Oscar statuettes (Photo: Pollich Tallix)

The 96th Academy Awards, which will honour the best films of 2023, will take place at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California on Sunday, March 10.

This year’s winners, when they are revealed on Sunday, will be taking home the famous Oscar statuette, which again will have a Croatian connection.

Polich Tallix Fine Art Foundry in New York, which was owned by the son of Croatian immigrants, has once again manufactured the famous Oscar statuette for the Academy Awards. For over 30 years the Oscar statuettes were made by a Chicago trophy firm, but since 2016, the Academy selected Polich Tallix Fine Art Foundry to take over the duties.

Polich Tallix was founded by the late Dick Polich. Polich’s (Polić) parents came to America at the beginning of the 1920s from the small village of Zlobin, which is situated between Primorje and Gorski Kotar near Bakra on the northern Adriatic coast.

Dick, who grew up in a western Chicago suburb among the Croatian immigrant community, passed away in November 2022 at a hospice in West Orange, N.J. at the age of 90.

Dick Polich (Photo credit: Pollich Tallix)

He said in earlier interviews that he did not know too much about Croatia but did remember the stories and legends he was told as a kid. He last visited Croatia over 20 years ago.

Bakar

Polich Tallix was among the first in the United States to offer technical expertise and industrial capabilities in metalworking, which had previously been only capable in Europe.

Polich, who went to Yale University on a football scholarship and graduated with an economics degree before founding his own foundry, made thousands of sculptures in his career and worked with more than five hundred artists. At the foundry at any one time, work is being carried out on over two hundred different works of art, from architectural elements to US national monuments to small sculptures and other art pieces.