Ljerka Gašparović was born in Novska in 1923. She completed her course in the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb in art history and immediately after taking her degree in 1958 worked as a volunteer in the Strossmayer Gallery of the Yugoslav/Croatian Academy, where she later received a permanent appointment. Along with museum-gallery work, educational work, expert guidance and correspondence in foreign languages (English, French and German) she put on a number of exhibitions, the best known of which are: Paolo Veneziano and His Circle; Julije Juraj Klović; and Ante Topić Mimara, for which she won the City of Zagreb Prize for 1969. She also worked on the reorganisation and new display of the Strossmayer Gallery.
She published review and scholarly articles in Buletin JAZU, Ljetopis JAZU, Encyclopaedia of the Fine Arts of the Lexicographic Institute and in Peristil.
She was a member of the Artworks Purchase Commission of the arts office of Zagreb during the socialist period, and took an active part in the creation of the purchase policy concerning recent works at exhibitions.
Her master’s thesis, entitled Wooden Altar Retables of the 17th Century in the Area of Former Ban’s Croatia, in which she carried out a meticulous and searching formal and stylistic analysis of the wooden retables and their decorations and of figural sculpting in the area of NW Croatia was considered excellent, and recommended to be supplied to the appropriate institutes - the Regional Institute for the Conservation of Monuments of Culture and the Croatian Conservation Institute, because it documented a condition of some of the features that gave cause for concern.

NB. Data taken from the questionnaire, material taken from the Personnel Archives of the MDC, and from an interview recorded on May 8 2004.