Manuel Carbonell

Large Modern Giraffe Sculpture by Manuel Carbonell Latin American Circa 1967

1967

A striking metal sculpture of a fish. Iron with gold gilt decoration. Probably Asian.

A large and early sand cast aluminum modernist sculpture of a giraffe by Cuban American artist Manuel Carbonell. Pedestal included. Measures: Height is 73” with base. Carbonell’s early sculptures where sand cast and unique. This is an edition of 1/1. Included is the original sketch of the work. Signed, circa 1967. Provenance: Ted Materna. Materna discovered Carbonell in the early 1960s. He produced Carbonell's gallery catalogs and helped promote him through his public relations firm in NYC. Manuel Carbonell (1918-2011) was regarded as the last of the Cuban Master...

Bronze sculpture Polished and patinated bronze sculpture. "Furnace Flowers" by mid century modern Italian sculptor Francesco Somaini (Italy 1926-...

Abstract brutalist chrome sculpture by Jason Seley "Sculptor's Harp 2". An abstract deep sea monster. Created 1966. Seley's preferred medium was chrome bumpers. Unsigned. Jason Se...

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Sinuous modern carving of a Mesoamerican. Aztec? Mayan? Striated sandstone, circa mid-20th century.

"TERAPHIM" Salvador Aulestia's Teraphim exhibition and simultaneous video presentation of the Teraphim exhibition held in front of Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper" on Corso Magenta...

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Infused with a crisp modernity and subtle sensuality, this bronze sculpture by Cuban-born artist Agustin Cárdenas is an exceptional example of late-2...

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A very heavy, massive bronze sculpture by an important Chicago sculptor. Signed and marked "Firenze" with "Fuse Marinelli". METROPOLIS. Seven abstract shapes on black marble base. 1...

"The Test," 1970 Aluminum sculpture in 5 parts. Artist's cipher and AP stamped into male figure, front, 20 5/16" x 12 1/2" x 6 5/7" (approx.) American sculptor King is most noted for his long-limbed figurative public art sculptures depicting people engaged in everyday activities such as reading or conversing. He created his busts and figures in a variety of materials, including clay, wood, metal, and textiles. William Dickey King was born in Jacksonville, Florida. As a boy, William made model airplanes and helped his father and older brother build furniture and boats. He came to New York, where he attended the Cooper Union and began selling his early sculptures even before he graduated. He later studied with the sculptor Milton Hebald and traveled to Italy on a Fulbright grant. Mr. King worked in clay, wood, bronze, vinyl, burlap and aluminum. He worked both big and small, from busts and toylike figures to large public art pieces depicting familiar human poses — a seated, cross-legged man reading; a Western couple (he in a cowboy hat, she in a long dress) holding hands; a tall man reaching down to tug along a recalcitrant little boy; a crowd of robotic-looking men walking in lock step. Mr. King’s work often reflected the times, taking on fashions and occasional politics. In the 1960s and 1970s, his work featuring African-American figures (including the activist Angela Davis, with hands cuffed behind her back) evoked his interest in civil rights. But for all its variation, what unified his work was a wry observer’s arched eyebrow, the pointed humor and witty rue of a fatalist. His figurative sculptures, often with long, spidery legs and an outlandishly skewed ratio of torso to appendages, use gestures and posture to suggest attitude and illustrate his own amusement with the unwieldiness of human physical equipment. His subjects included tennis players and gymnasts, dancers and musicians, and he managed to show appreciation of their physical gifts and comic delight at their contortions and costumery. His suit-wearing businessmen often appeared haughty or pompous; his other men could seem timid or perplexed or awkward. Oddly, or perhaps tellingly, he tended to depict women more reverentially, though in his portrayals of couples the fragility and tender comedy inherent in couplehood settled equally on both partners. His first solo exhibit took place in 1954 at the Alan Gallery in New York City. King was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2003, and in 2007 the International Sculpture Center honored him with the Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award. Mr. King’s work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Hirshorn Museum at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, among other places, and he had dozens of solo gallery shows in New York and elsewhere. Reviews of his exhibitions frequently began with the caveat that even though the work was funny, it was also serious, displaying superior technical skills, imaginative vision and the bolstering weight of a range of influences, from the ancient Etruscans to American folk art to 20th-century artists including Giacometti, Calder and Elie Nadelman. The New York Times critic Holland Cotter once described Mr. King’s sculpture as “comical-tragical-maniacal,” and “like Giacomettis conceived by John Cheever.”