October 14th, 2011 from 6-9PM
Join Williamsburg’s EVERY 2nd FRIDAY gallery crawl
sponsored by AT&T and take an App-Guided Artwalk with WAGMAG
for more details, visit http://wgabrooklyn.org
This month at Figureworks:
20th Century Figurative Sculpture
Pedro Friedeberg, Thermometer Girl, mixed media, 14″ x 12″x 5″
September 9 – November 6, 2011
Figureworks
fine art of the human form
168 North 6th St. (1 block from Bedford Avenue “L” train)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, NY 11211
www.figureworks.com
This new season welcomes more progressive changes and new directions for Figureworks. As noted in last season, there is a greater focus on exhibitions that include 20th century artwork. Having acquired a great deal more paintings, sculpture and works on paper from this period over the summer, this focus will heighten beginning with 20th Century Figurative Sculpture. Pieces from various artists were selected to expose a broad range of style, medium, and individuality.
Following is a partial list of included sculptors. All these exceptional artists have enhanced our culture with their public sculptures.
Pedro Friedeberg (b. 1936) began producing furniture and invented the now-famous hand chair in the 1960s, which he continues to create to this day along with assorted chairs ranging from butterfly chairs to small stools and upholstered couches. This small series of sculptures, such as “Thermometer Girl” pictured above, optimize his whimsical ability to create narrative and often functional works of art.
Chaim Gross (March 17, 1904 – May 5, 1991) was an Austrian born American sculptor. Gross was noted for his direct wood carvings, frequently using South American hardwood for its exquisite grain to highlight various curves and form. In 1922 he began sculpture and drawing classes at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design with Elie Nadelman and began exhibiting his sculpture in 1935. Brooklyn Museum of Art houses “Ballerina”, a wood carving executed before crowds at the 1940’s World Fair. Gross served as President of the Sculptors Guild of America. His sculptures can be found in numerous museums and private collections.
Milton Hebald (born May 24, 1917, NYC) is a sculptor who specializes in figurative bronze works. Twenty-three of his works are publically displayed in New York City, including the statues of Romeo and Juliet and The Tempest in front of the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park. His major work, created in 1961, is a 220-foot 12-piece Zodiac Screen, then the largest sculpture in the world, commissioned by Pan-American Airlines for its terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Bruno Lucchesi (born 1926 in Lucca, Italy) is a sculptor most known for his contemplative female figures and genre scenes that capture daily life. His works are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Whitney Museum, Hirshhorn Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, and many others. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as gold medals from the National Sculpture Society and the National Academy. Lucchesi has published four books on sculpture.
Alexander Ney (born 1939 in Leningrad, Russia) is known for his unique work in terra cotta sculpture, involving heavily perforated surfaces and intriguing forms. Ney immigrated to the United States in 1974, where his intricate and innovative approach to modeling ceramic sculpture continues to gain greater recognition and praise.
Hugo Robus (May 10, 1885 – January 14, 1964) moved to NYC in 1918 and focused his career on sculpture. Greatly influenced by the wave of Cubism and Futurism, he developed his distinctive sculptural style of streamlining his figures with gentle curves that enfold and quiet each form. These pieces, cast in silver and bronze, were often highly polished. Robus has an extensive exhibition history and his work is in numerous private and public collections throughout the world.
William Zorach (1887 Eurberg Lithuania – 1966 USA) studied painting at the National Academy of Design in New York City (1907-1910) and then went to Paris. There he saw his first modern art and was particularly attracted to cubism. In 1911 he returned to America and two of his abstract paintings were accepted for the famous 1913 Armory Show in New York. Though Zorach was completely self-taught as a sculptor, he understood and stated that “real sculpture is something monumental, something hewn from solid mass, something with repose, with inner and outer form, with strength and power.” The Whitney Museum of American Art mounted a major retrospective of Zorach’s painting and sculpture in 1959, and the Brooklyn Museum organized an important posthumous exhibition in 1968.
