Ivana Tomljenović–Meller was an artist, designer and typographer.
She studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb from 1924 to 1928 in the class of the famous painter and pedagogue Ljubo Babić. In 1929 Tomljenović–Meller moved to Dessau and enrolled at the Bauhaus. She graduated from a preparatory course under Josef Albers and studied photography with Walter Peterhansa. Her dominant interests were poster design and photo editing. In the third semester at Bauhaus, Tomljenović–Meller abandoned her studies and moved to Berlin and in 1931 to Paris. From 1933 to 1935, she worked in Prague, where in collaboration with her husband A. Meller, she created kinetic arrangements for department store windows. Tomljenović-Meller worked as an art lecturer in Belgrade (1935 – 1938) and Zagreb (1938 – 1962).
The photographs Tomljenović-Meller created at Bauhaus demonstrate all the features of the new sensitivity and visual culture of the time: vertical perspective, lower angle, occasionally bizarre themes, light-shadow contrasts, double exposition, experimentation with negatives and photo-montages. Furthermore, with her camera, Tomljenović captured Dessau’s Bauhaus’ dynamic and enthusiastic atmosphere. Her photographs represent the everyday life of Bauhaus students, her friends and acquaintances, and her unquestionable orientation towards the new aesthetics of the photographic image.