Skip to main content

Ernest Trova Sculptures

American, 1927-2009
In the early 1960s, St. Louis Sculptor Ernest Trova—who was entirely self-taught—began developing his pivotal theme of Falling Man, a stark and startling image that combines references to classical sculpture with an industrial aesthetic. In his Profile Canto series, Falling Man—depicted as an androgynous, mechanical figure—is folded and segmented as to be nearly undetectable amid the various geometric forms that comprise these works.
(Biography provided by ArtWise)
to
1
6
3
1
2
Overall Height
to
Overall Width
to
3
1
1
3
1
1
1
1
1
4
2
1
9
408
242
230
121
6
4
2
Artist: Ernest Trova
Flowing Man
By Ernest Trova
Located in Boca Raton, FL
Edition 37/99
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Stainless Steel

Walking Man with Disc
By Ernest Trova
Located in Wilton Manors, FL
Beautiful figural sculpture by American artist, Ernest Tino Trova (1927-2009). Walking Man with Disc (working study), 1966. Brass sheet with cut-out figure in profile, sheet measures...
Category

Mid-20th Century Abstract Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Brass

Double Flapman
By Ernest Trova
Located in Boca Raton, FL
AP 2 Ernest Trova was an artist whose signature creation, a gleaming humanoid known as “Falling Man,” appeared in a series of sculptures and paintings and became a symbol of an imperfect humanity hurtling into the future. Mr. Trova was largely known as a sculptor, but his “Falling Man,” a standard of Pop Art, began life as a painted figure, taking shape on his easel in the early 1960s. Faceless, armless, with a hint of a belly and, its name notwithstanding, of indeterminate sex, the figure struck a variety of poses, sometimes juxtaposed with other like figures, sometimes with mechanical appendages. In October 1963 his one-man show, “Falling Man Paintings,” was the inaugural exhibition of the Pace Gallery on West 57th Street in Manhattan; it sold out, with the works purchased by the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the architect Philip Johnson and others. In three dimensions, the “Falling Man” figure was made from different materials over the years — nickel and chrome-plated bronze, enamel on aluminum, stainless steel — and often, like the Oscar statuette, was polished to an industrial sheen. It was clearly a space age creation, a forerunner of C3PO, the golden robot in “Star Wars.” “He found the space age both inspiring and dehumanizing,” Arne Glimcher, who founded the Pace Gallery, now PaceWildenstein, said in an interview on Friday. By the end of the 1960s, “Falling Man” had become Mr. Trova’s trademark, provoking Hilton Kramer, the art critic of The New York Times, to write that Mr. Trova had subjected his favorite figure “to almost as many variations as the Kama Sutra describes for the act of love.” Ernest Tino Trova Jr. was born in St. Louis on Feb. 19, 1927. Shortly after his high school graduation his father, an industrial tool designer and inventor, died, and young Ernie, as he was known, went to work, most significantly as a window dresser for a department store. His early paintings were in the Abstract Expressionist mode, but his attentiveness to the mannequins had an influence on his art. Through the 1970s and 1980s he continued with “Falling Man,” though he also became interested in formalized, almost mechanical-seeming landscapes, and the figures began to appear, reduced in size, within the context of abstractly rendered gardens. A self-taught artist with an impish wit and an eccentric turn of mind, Mr. Trova craved the recognition that was available to artists only in New York City, but he never visited for more than a week at a time and made almost no friends among New York artists. He did befriend Ezra Pound. As a fevered fan of Julio Iglesias...
Category

20th Century Contemporary Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Stainless Steel

Double Walking Figure
By Ernest Trova
Located in Boca Raton, FL
rnest Trova was an artist whose signature creation, a gleaming humanoid known as “Falling Man,” appeared in a series of sculptures and paintings and became a symbol of an imperfect humanity hurtling into the future. Mr. Trova was largely known as a sculptor, but his “Falling Man,” a standard of Pop Art, began life as a painted figure, taking shape on his easel in the early 1960s. Faceless, armless, with a hint of a belly and, its name notwithstanding, of indeterminate sex, the figure struck a variety of poses, sometimes juxtaposed with other like figures, sometimes with mechanical appendages. In October 1963 his one-man show, “Falling Man Paintings,” was the inaugural exhibition of the Pace Gallery on West 57th Street in Manhattan; it sold out, with the works purchased by the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the architect Philip Johnson and others. In three dimensions, the “Falling Man” figure was made from different materials over the years — nickel and chrome-plated bronze, enamel on aluminum, stainless steel — and often, like the Oscar statuette, was polished to an industrial sheen. It was clearly a space age creation, a forerunner of C3PO, the golden robot in “Star Wars.” “He found the space age both inspiring and dehumanizing,” Arne Glimcher, who founded the Pace Gallery, now PaceWildenstein, said in an interview on Friday. By the end of the 1960s, “Falling Man” had become Mr. Trova’s trademark, provoking Hilton Kramer, the art critic of The New York Times, to write that Mr. Trova had subjected his favorite figure “to almost as many variations as the Kama Sutra describes for the act of love.” Ernest Tino Trova Jr. was born in St. Louis on Feb. 19, 1927. Shortly after his high school graduation his father, an industrial tool designer and inventor, died, and young Ernie, as he was known, went to work, most significantly as a window dresser for a department store. His early paintings were in the Abstract Expressionist mode, but his attentiveness to the mannequins had an influence on his art. Through the 1970s and 1980s he continued with “Falling Man,” though he also became interested in formalized, almost mechanical-seeming landscapes, and the figures began to appear, reduced in size, within the context of abstractly rendered gardens. A self-taught artist with an impish wit and an eccentric turn of mind, Mr. Trova craved the recognition that was available to artists only in New York City, but he never visited for more than a week at a time and made almost no friends among New York artists. He did befriend Ezra Pound. As a fevered fan of Julio Iglesias, he went to the singer’s concerts all over the United States. “Ernie had a fabulous fantasy life,” Richard Solomon, the president of Pace Prints, the publishing arm of PaceWildenstein, said in an interview. “He had a persona he used to hide behind that he called ‘Junior Person.’ He was a wonderful man, but an oddball to beat the band.” Mr. Trova left the Pace Gallery in the mid-1980s and signed with an inexperienced dealer in St. Louis. His profile went into decline, except in his hometown, where his donation of many of his works helped create the Laumeier Sculpture Park. He continued to work until shortly before his death. Most recently he was making collages using magazine...
Category

20th Century Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Stainless Steel

Study/Falling Man (Six Figures on a Sphere)
By Ernest Trova
Located in Saint Louis, MO
Ernest Trova Study/Falling Man (Six Figures on a Sphere), 2006 Brass, red paint 8 x 10 inches (20.3 x 25.4 cm)
Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Brass

The Encounter
By Ernest Trova
Located in Missouri, MO
Ernest Trova "The Encounter" 1994 Chrome Plated Steel Approx 24 x 26 x 24 inches Edition 1/8 Known for his Falling Man series in abstract figural sculpture, he created hard-edge ima...
Category

1990s American Modern Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Stainless Steel

Related Items
LADY AND SCOTTISH DOG
Located in Pasadena, CA
Magnificent beautiful masterpiece bronze sculpture of lady with the Scottish Deer Hunter dog bronze comes with green patina; 1/10 So beautiful and a lot...
Category

2010s American Modern Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Bronze

Leslie Hawk Sculptural Human Figure & Horse "Person on a Horse"
Located in Detroit, MI
"Person on a Horse" is a concrete, glass and steel structure with horse in mid-stride looking up and forward. The person astride leans forward as in encouragement to the stead or in weariness of the journey, perhaps both. Leslie Hawk...
Category

Late 20th Century American Modern Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Concrete, Steel

Beautiful Kinetic Bronze Sculpture "La Perle Nera", Museum exhibition history
By Gianfranco Meggiato
Located in Palm Beach, FL
Kinetic bronze sculpture
Category

2010s Abstract Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Bronze

Kinetic Bronze Sculpture "Vortice Energia", by Gianfranco Meggiato
By Gianfranco Meggiato
Located in Palm Beach, FL
Kinetic Bronze Sculpture by Gianfranco Meggiato. In his work, Meggiato gets inspiration from the most mysterious city on Earth, city where he was born, lives and works - Venice. Spa...
Category

2010s Abstract Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Bronze, Gold Leaf

Monumental Outdoor Bronze sculpture "Sfera Antares" by Gianfranco Meggiato
By Gianfranco Meggiato
Located in Palm Beach, FL
Beautiful kinetic out-door sculpture by Gianfranco Meggiato. Bronze. Gianfranco Meggiato was born on August 26, 1963 in Venice, where he studied stone, bronze, wood and ceramics scu...
Category

2010s Abstract Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Bronze

"Being", Airy Handmade Metal Mesh and Dark Ginger Wool Pendant Mural Sculpture
By Delphine Grandvaux
Located in Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes
Elegance for its forms, sobriety for its materials, this sensual sculpture named « Being» is a meshwork combining with felted dark ginger wool, creat...
Category

2010s Abstract Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Metal

Bronze Abstract Space Age Book Sculpture LA California Modernist Charna Rickey
By Charna Rickey
Located in Surfside, FL
Charna Rickey 1923 - 2000 Mexican-American Jewish Woman artist. Signed Bronze House of Books, Architecture Bronze sculpture, signed Charna Rickey and on the front "House of the book." It depicts an open Torah. Original patina. Approx. dimensions: 7 in. H x 9 in. W x 8.5 in. D. Weight: 13.1 lbs. Modernist Judaica Sculpture Born Charna Barsky (Charna Ysabel or Isabel Rickey Barsky) in Chihuahua, Mexico, the future artist lived in Hermosillo and immigrated to Los Angeles when she was 11. She was educated at UCLA and Cal State L.A., she married furniture retailer David Rickey and explored art while raising their three daughters. Moving through phases in terra cotta, bronze, marble and aluminum, she found success later in life. Rickey became one of the original art teachers at Everywoman's Village, a pioneering learning center for women established by three housewives in Van Nuys in 1963. She also taught sculpture at the University of Judaism from 1965 to 1981. As Rickey became more successful, her sculptures were exhibited in such venues as Artspace Gallery in Woodland Hills and the Courtyard of Century Plaza Towers as part of a 1989 Sculpture Walk produced by the Los Angeles Arts Council. Her sculptures have also found their way into the private collections of such celebrities as Sharon Stone. Another of Rickey's international creations originally stood at Santa Monica College. In 1985, her 12-foot-high musical sculpture shaped like the Hebrew letter "shin" was moved to the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The free standing architectural Judaic aluminum work has strings that vibrate in the wind to produce sounds. Rickey also created art pieces for the city of Brea. They commissioned some amazing art pieces by Laddie John Dill, Walter Dusenbery, Woods Davy, Rod Kagan, Pol Bury, Niki de Saint Phalle, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Larry Bell, John Okulick...
Category

20th Century American Modern Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Marble, Bronze

Bronze Female Nude Sculpture Modernist, WPA, New York Chelsea Hotel Artist
By Eugenie Gershoy
Located in Surfside, FL
Eugenie Gershoy (January 1, 1901 – May 8, 1986) was an American sculptor and watercolorist. Eugenie Gershoy was born in Krivoy Rog, Russia (Krivoi Rog, Ukraine) and emigrated to New York City in the United States as a child in 1903. Considered somewhat of a child prodigy, Gershoy was copying Old Master drawings at the age of 5. Her interest and talent in art was encouraged from a very young age. Aided by scholarships, she studied at the Art Students League under Alexander Stirling Calder, Leo Lentelli, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and Boardman Robinson. Around this time, she created a group of portrait figurines of her fellow artists, including Arnold Blanch, Lucile Blanch, Raphael Soyer, William Zorach, Concetta Scaravaglione, and Emil Ganso, which were exhibited as a group at the Whitney Museum of American Art. At age 17, she was awarded the Saint-Gaudens Medal for fine draughtsmanship. Early in her career she became an active member of the Woodstock art colony. In Woodstock she experimented by sculpting in the profusion of indigenous materials that she found. Working with fieldstone, oak and chestnut, Gershoy created works based on classic formulae. As she became more interested in the dynamism of everyday life, she found that these materials and her idiom were too restrictive. By the time Gershoy came to Woodstock in 1921 her own individual artistic style was already evident in her sculptures. Eugenie Gershoy worked in stone, bronze, terracotta, plaster and papier-mache. Gershoy’s sculptures were mainly figurative in nature and many of her artist peers such as Carl Walters, Raphael and Moses Soyer, William Zorach and Lucille Blanch, became her subjects. Eugenie Gershoy’s works on paper should not be overlooked. She was the winner of the Gaudens Medal for Fine Draughtsmanship at the tender age of 17. Gershoy married Jewish Romanian-born artist Harry Gottlieb. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the pair kept a studio in Woodstock, New York. There, Gershoy was influenced by sculptor John Flanagan, who lived and worked nearby. From 1936 to 1939, Gershoy worked for the WPA Federal Art Project. She collaborated with Max Spivak on murals for the children's recreation room of the Queens Borough Public Library in Astoria, New York. She developed a mixture of wheat paste, plaster, and egg tempera, which she used in polychrome papier-mâché sculptures; she was the only New York sculptor to work in polychrome at this time. She also designed cement and mosaic sculptures of animals and figures to be placed in New York City playgrounds. Alongside others employed by the FAP, she participated in a sit-down strike in Washington, DC, to advocate for better pay and improved working conditions for the projects' artists. Gershoy's first solo exhibition was held at the Robinson Gallery in New York in 1940. She moved to San Francisco in 1942, and began teaching ceramics at the California School of Fine Arts in 1946. In 1950, she studied at the artists' colony at Yaddo. Gershoy traveled extensively throughout her life. She visited England and France in the early 1930s, and worked in Paris in 1951. She traveled to Mexico and Guatemala in the late 1940s, and also toured Africa, India, and the Orient in 1955. In 1977, Gershoy dedicated a sculpture to Audrey McMahon, who was actively involved in the creation of the Federal Art Project and served as its regional director in New York, in recognition of the work McMahon provided struggling artists in the 1930s. Gershoy's work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Her papers are held at Syracuse University Grant Arnold introduced her to lithography in 1930 and Gershoy depicted many scenes of Woodstock artists and their daily activities through this medium. From 1942 to 1966 Gershoy lived and painted in San Francisco where she taught at the San Francisco Art Institute. She traveled extensively, filling sketchbooks with scenes of Mexico, France, Spain, Africa and India. During her later years Eugenie Gershoy returned to New York City and concentrated on numerous well received exhibitions. Her last exhibition in at Sid Deutsch Gallery included many of the sculptures that were later exhibited in the Fletcher Gallery. John Russell, former chief critic of fine arts for the New York Times, writes about the 1986 Sid Deutsch exhibition: “As Eugenie Gershoy won the Saint-Gaudens Medal for fine draftsmanship as long ago as 1914 and since 1967 has had 15 papier-mache portrait figures suspended from the ceiling of the lobby of the Hotel Chelsea, she must be ranked as a veteran of the New York scene. Her present exhibition includes not only the high-spirited papier-mache sculptures for which she is best known but a group of small portraits of artists, mostly dating from the 30’s, that is strongly evocative.” Eugenie Gershoy is an artist to take note of for several reasons. She was a woman who received great awards and recognition during a time when most female artists were struggling to hold their own against their male counterparts. As a young girl she won a scholarship to the Arts Student League where she met Hannah Small...
Category

Mid-20th Century American Modern Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Bronze

Harmony, 20th century bronze & green marble base, nude man and woman with lyre
By Max Kalish
Located in Beachwood, OH
Max Kalish (American, 1891-1945) Harmony, c. 1930 Bronze with green marble base Incised signature on right upper side of base 14 x 9 x 5 inches, excluding base 17 x 10 x 8 inches, including base Born in Poland March 1, 1891, figurative sculptor Max Kalish came to the United States in 1894, his family settling in Ohio. A talented youth, Kalish enrolled at the Cleveland Institute of Art as a fifteen-year-old, receiving a first-place award for modeling the figure during studies with Herman Matzen. Kalish went to New York City following graduation, studying with Isidore Konti...
Category

1930s American Modern Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Marble, Bronze

Dancer - Jan Wils 21st Century Contemporary Abstract Sculpture Brass
Located in Nuenen, Noord Brabant
Jan Wils is an artist born in the city of Eindhoven, in The Netherlands. We would almost call his sculptures ‘outdoor sculptures’, spatial objects that show m...
Category

2010s Contemporary Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Brass

Inside/Out - large, abstracted, figurative, outdoor stainless steel sculpture
By Dale Dunning
Located in Bloomfield, ON
A human face emerges from the intricately designed stainless steel mesh of this intriguing sculpture. Ottawa artist Dale Dunning views his work as “objects of reflection and contem...
Category

2010s Contemporary Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Steel, Metal, Stainless Steel

Red Sun - abstract figurative sculpture
By Gal Melnick
Located in New York, NY
This abstract figurative sculpture by Gal Melnick is from here latest body of works. It is a laser cut metal sculpture which is painted with automotive pai...
Category

2010s Abstract Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Metal

Previously Available Items
FALLING MAN GOX (SCULPTURE)
By Ernest Trova
Located in Aventura, FL
Bronze and steel sculpture with black patination, on black acrylic base. Etched artist signature with title, date and edition to base underside. Published by Pace Editions. From t...
Category

1970s Pop Art Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Bronze, Steel

TRISTAN GOX (SCULPTURE)
By Ernest Trova
Located in Aventura, FL
Steel and bronze sculpture. Inscribed signature and numbered. Artwork is in excellent condition. Certificate of authenticity included. Edition of 125. All reasonable offers will be...
Category

1970s Pop Art Ernest Trova Sculptures

Materials

Bronze, Steel

Ernest Trova sculptures for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Ernest Trova sculptures available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Ernest Trova in metal, stainless steel, brass and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the contemporary style. Not every interior allows for large Ernest Trova sculptures, so small editions measuring 9 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Anthony Quinn, Peter Reginato, and Walter Peter Brenner. Ernest Trova sculptures prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $1,200 and tops out at $55,000, while the average work can sell for $18,500.

Recently Viewed

View All