Alan Johnston

Scottish Abstract Contemporary Minimalist Art Bronze Sculpture Alan Johnston 2/2

1988

Roberto Estopinan, Cuban, 1920 - 2015 Dimensions: 24.5" wide x 13" high plus 6" high base. Roberto Estopiñán (1921–2015) was a Cuban American sculptor known for his sculptures of the human form, including political prisoners. Born in Camaguey, Cuba, he lived in the United States for over fifty years. His works are held by major institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. Roberto Gabriel Estopinan, a sculptor, draftsman, and printmaker, was born in Havana, Cuba on March 18, 1921. Estopiñán enrolled at the San Alejandro Academy when he was just 14 years old and became the protegé and studio assistant of the sculptor Juan José Sicre. After graduation he traveled first to Mexico, where he met and befriended Francisco Zuniga, and studied Pre-Columbian sculpture. In 1949 he traveled to Europe, visiting England, France and Italy. In these trips he encountered the sculpture of Henry Moore and Marino Marini, and their humanistic yet formal visions would be influential on Estopinan's work. Estopiñán was a pioneer of direct carvings using wood and of welding techniques in Latin America. Throughout the 1950s, Estopiñán received important prizes at various national exhibitions in Havana. In 1953 he was the only semi-finalist from Latin America at the Tate Gallery's international sculpture competition for a Monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner. In 1961, the artist moved to New York, where he resided until 2002. Roberto Gabriel Estopiñán a Cuban emigre sculptor who emigrated to exile in the United States not long after Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959, is considered one of Latin America’s most important 20th-century artists. His work, which includes drawings and prints as well as sculptures in wood and bronze, is in the collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Detroit Institute of Art, among many locations. He is best known for his stark, disturbing renderings of political prisoners, the fruit of his own experiences as a dissident under both Castro and his predecessor, the dictator Fulgencio Batista, and for his representations of the female torso that can remind viewers of both classical statuary and the high-modern, abstractly elongated work of Henry Moore.mHe was born in Havana to a father from Asturias in northwest Spain and a mother of African descent. Estopiñán was something of a prodigy. At the age of fourteen, he won the first prize in drawing at the Centro Asturiano, a regional association for Cubans of Asturian descent. Shortly afterward he received special permission to enter the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts in Havana. At the school he was mentored first by its director, the painter Armando Menocal (1863-1941), then by the landscape artist Antonio Rodríguez Morey (1872-1967), and finally by Juan José Sicre (1898-1974), regarded as one of Cuba’s greatest sculptors. Sicre, a professor of sculpture at the Academy, had helped introduce European modernist art to Cuba, and from the 1930s through the 1950s had sculpted monumental figures in Havana of José Martí and other Cuban national heroes that stand to this day. Estopiñán was first Sicre’s student, then his assistant, and, finally, his colleague for the next fifty years. After graduating from San Alejandro in 1942, Estopiñán began simultaneously teaching art at the Ceiba del Agua School for young men, assisting Sicre in public art projects and developing his own artistic vision. He also traveled widely, to Mexico, New York, France, and Italy. From the late 1940s through the 1950s his sculpture evolved from an early neoclassical phase under the influence of Maillol to what he defined as “formalist humanism”: emphasizing the abstract beauty of the shapes he sculpted while not abandoning the human figure as the basis of his work. As the 1950s progressed he chose to carve in native Cuban woods...

Naum Knop (Ukrainian-Argentinean, 1917-1993) Modernist Brutalist bronze figural sculpture with heavy verdigris green finish. Melted forms in the shape of an abstract pretzel like twist. Affixed to white stone plinth. Artist signature, "NK" side of base. Good condition, shows rich green patina and aged oxidation. Measures approximately 17.5 in. x 19.5 in. x 6.5 in. Naum Knop, Argentine sculptor, was born in 1917 in Buenos Aires, into a Jewish family of Russian origin from Ukraine. His childhood was spent in the neighborhood of La Paternal where his father had a carpentry workshop, a space in which he made contact for the first time with the technique of wood carving. After finishing elementary school, he worked with the teacher Luis Fernández and soon after he dedicated himself to furniture design. Around 1935, he entered the Manuel Belgrano School of Fine Arts . Between 1941 and 1942 he attended the course for graduates taught by Alberto Lagos and Alfredo Bigatti at the National School of Fine Arts and continued his training between 1942-1945 at the Ernesto de la Cárcova High School with Soto Avedaño, Carlos de la Cárcova and José Fioravanti. At this time he put his works in dialogue with other young artists such as Libero Badii and Aurelio Macchi . Around 1947 he made his study trip abroad. He goes to California, United States, where he enters the Art Institute of Los Angeles. At the same time visit museums and galleries. In January 1948 he organized his first exhibition abroad, held at the Hall of Arts in Beverly Hills in Los Angeles. During this period he toured Chicago and then New York. That year he traveled to Europe; his itinerary includes France, Italy, Switzerland and England. As a result, he came into contact with the work of Henry Moore, Hans Jean Arp, Jacques Lipchitz, Constantin Brancusi, Umberto Boccioni, Henry Laurens, Ossip Zadkine. Artists who have an impact on the young Knop and whom he honors in his subsequent production. He returned to Argentina in 1949 and installed his workshop where he worked on ornamental carving and on pieces in which he oscillated between a synthetic figuration and abstraction. In 1956 he began his successful participation in salons , obtaining numerous awards at the national and municipal level. In 1959 he participated in the shipment to the 5th São Paulo Biennial and since then, to the success achieved at the local level, the multiple exhibitions carried out in the international field have been added. The exhibitions in Tel Aviv , Jerusalem and Rome (1966) stand out; Dusseldorf (1977); Los Angeles and Palm Spring (1981); New York (1986), San Pablo and Los Angeles(1989). During this period, his work matured, while he began to experiment with the direct wax technique, obtaining textured surfaces similar to welds that gave it a strong abstract expressionist feature. In parallel to his personal production and to the small models, the artist receives private and public commissions for which he works on large-scale sculptures and murals. Around 1967, the architect Mario R. Álvarez summons him to participate in a closed competition for the creation of a work to be located in the General San Martín Cultural Center . Libero Badii and Enio Iommi participate with the artist ; the bronze Reclining Figure Knop is chosen. Among the large-scale monuments it is worth remembering the piece Los tres soles temporarily located in Recoleta in 1984 and later installed in Maryland, United States; as well as Seated Figure (Reminiscence of Michelangelo) located in the shield of a private building in 1970. To these are added the numerous murals in which he experiments with various materials and techniques such as casting in bronze, openwork and reliefs in wood and work in cement. He was included in the The 1962 International Prize for Sculpture the jury included Argan, Romero Brest and James Johnson Sweeney the former director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. The participants included Louise Nevelson and John Chamberlain for the United States; Lygia Clark for Brazil; Pietro Consagra, Lucio Fontana, Nino Franchina, and Gió Pomodoro for Italy; Pablo Serrano for Spain; and Eduardo Paolozzi, William Turnbull, and Kenneth Armitage for England. Gyula Kosice, Noemí Gerstein, Julio Gero, Naum Knop, Aldo Paparella, Enrique Romano, Eduardo Sabelli, and Luis Alberto...

Striking bronze organic sculpture by Latin American sculptor Raúl Valdivieso (Chilean, 1931-1993). Valdivieso is known for his reinterpretation of the ...