Ivan Zajec’s sculptural oeuvre includes sacral sculptures, gravestones and monuments, portraits, figures, sculptural allegories, and various genre motifs. Throughout his career, Zajec was content to pursue non-homogeneous forms in the tradition of late 19th-century sculpture and kept with the styles of the past, whether sculpting monuments and gravestones or portraits, figures and genre compositions.

Female Bust is informed by Zajec’s Parisian experience and recalls the Vienna Secession. The subject, wearing a fashionable hairstyle, gazes ahead melancholically. The untreated structure of the subject’s bust alludes to rich drapery and her detachment is enticingly complemented by elegance. The portrait is in all respects exceptional in Zajec’s oeuvre.