Bill Barrett

Untitled, 1973

1973

William King (1925-2015). Reclining figure, ca. 1965. Cast and welded bronze, 7 x 9.5 x 5 inches. Unsigned. William King, a sculptor in a variety of materials whose human figures traced social attitudes through the last half of the 20th century, often poking sly and poignant fun at human follies and foibles, died on March 4 at his home in East Hampton, N.Y. He was 90. His death was confirmed by Scott Chaskey, who is married to Mr. King's stepdaughter, Megan Chaskey. 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. 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. Mr. King's work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, among other places, and he had dozens of solo gallery shows in New York and elsewhere. But the comic element of his work probably caused his reputation to suffer. 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 critic Hilton Kramer, one of Mr. King's most ardent advocates, wrote in a 1970 essay accompanying a New York gallery exhibit that he was, "among other things, an amusing artist, and nowadays this can, at times, be almost as much a liability as an asset." A "preoccupation with gesture is the focus of King's sculptural imagination," Mr. Kramer wrote. "Everything that one admires in his work - the virtuoso carving, the deft handling of a wide variety of materials, the shrewd observation and resourceful invention - all this is secondary to the concentration on gesture. The physical stance of the human animal as it negotiates the social arena, the unconscious gait that the body assumes in making its way in the social medium, the emotion traced by the course of a limb, a torso, a head, the features of a face, a coiffure or a costume - from a keen observation of these materials King has garnered a large stock of sculptural images notable for their wit, empathy, simplicity and psychological precision." William Dickey King...

Abstract sculpture by American artist, Jack Youngerman (b.1926). Nexus, 1990. 24.5 inches. Aluminum, numbered 2/3. Signed and numbered on base. 1926 Born, St. Louis, Missouri; moved with family to Louisville, Kentucky in 1929 1943-44; 1946-47 Attended University of Missouri 1944-46 U.S. Navy, University of North Carolina 1947-49 Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris 1949-55 Lived and worked in Paris 1956 Returned to the United States; lived in New York City 1956-1995 1995-current Resides in Bridgehampton, New York ONE MAN EXHIBITIONS: 1951 Galerie Arnaud, Paris 1958 Betty Parsons Gallery, New York (1960, 1961, 1964, 1967, 1968) 1959 Museum of Modern Art, New York, "Sixteen Americans" 1962 Galerie Lawrence, Paris (also 1965) 1963 Galeria dell' Ariete, Milan Everett Ellen Gallery, Los Angeles, California The Phillips Collection, Washington, D. C. 1971 Pace Gallery, New York (also 1972, 1975) 1972 Portland Center for the Arts, Oregon Seattle Art Museum, Washington 1973 The Arts Club of Chicago, Illinois Galerie Denise Rene, Paris 1975 Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire 1976 Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York 1981 Washburn Gallery...

Klaus Ihlenfeld (b.1934). Untitled, ca. 1960. Welded bronze. 8" h.; 5.5 " w; 3.25" d (base). Signed with initial under base. Provenance: Directly from estate of Harry Bertoia. The piece was a gift from Ihlenfeld and is a very early example created during Bertoia apprenticeship era. Excellent condition. Klaus Karl Otto IhlenfeldHe was born in Berlin, Germany in 1934. He studied art at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste and completed graduate work with the metal sculptor Hans Uhlmann. He visited the US in 1957 for the first time living in Durham, NC, where he befriended Dr. W. R. Valentiner, the Rembrandt authority and Director of the Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC. Through this friendship in 1960 he met and worked with the metal sculptor Harry Bertoia in Barto, PA. He joined the Staempfli Gallery in NYC and entered in many group and one-man shows. He has been an Artist-in-Residence in Ogden, Utah; Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia, Penn State University at University Park; the Colorado State University in Denver; and Shippensburg University. He has large commissions at Kutztown University, Pottstown Hospital, and a monumental relief sculpture at the Emigrant Savings Bank in NYC. He has traveled extensively in Spain, Greece, and Mexico. He is living and working on a farm in Barto, PA welding bronze and forged iron metal sculptures and painting watercolors. Group Shows: North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh, NC - 1957 Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City - 1962 Staempfli Gallery in New York City - 1962, 1964 and 1965 Gallery Ludwig Lange in West Berlin, Germany - 1977 Gallery Herbert Remmert and Dr. Barth in Dusseldorf in West Germany - 1981 Jack Savitt Gallery in Macungie, PA - 1981 and 1984 Heinz Ortleb Gallery, West Berlin, Germany - 1992 Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce Show at the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, PA - 1997 Berks Art Alliance Show at the Reading Art Museum in Reading, PA - 1997 Mayfair Festival of the Arts at the Allentown Art Museum - 1998 Baum School of Art in Allentown, PA - 1997 Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center Art Show in Pennsburg, PA - 2001 Reading Public Museum in Reading PA, 2014 Solo Shows: Kutztown University in Kutztown, PA - 1960 and 1965 Allentown Art Museum in Allentown, PA - 1960 and 1961 Staempfli Gallery in New York City - 1962 Penn State University in University Park, PA - 1964 and 1972 Berks Art Alliance in Wyomissing, PA - 1966 Bertha Eccles Art Center in Ogden, Utah - 1967 Mansfield University in Mansfield, PA - 1967 Huntington Museum of Art in Huntington, WV - 1971 Shippensburg University in Shippensburg, PA - 1972 Albright College in Reading, PA - 1973 Ianuzzi Gallery in Scottsdale, AZ - 1974 Gallery Heimat 85 in West Berlin, Germany - 1977 Jack Savitt Gallery in Macungie, PA - 1981 College Misericordia in Dallas, PA - 1983 Schwenkfelder Library and Heritage Center in Pennsburg, PA, 2013 Periodical Reference: Kaye, Ellen "The Obsessive Collector," Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine Sptember 21, 1986 pp. 32-33. Chronology: 1-30-1934 Born in Berlin, Germany. Father, Kurt Ihlenfeld, Lutheran pastor, novelist, critic and publisher was born in 1901 in Colmar, Alsace Lorain. Mother, Annie Stuhlmann, was born in 1905 in Breslau, Lower Silesia. 1940 - 1950 Public schools in Berlin; Löwen, Lower Silesia; Coswig, Radebeul, Glaubitz, Saxony. Königin Luise-Gymnasium in Dahlem, Berlin. First artworks, drawings and paintings; few sculptures. 1950 - 1956 Studied at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in West Berlin, Germany. Graduate work with metal sculptor Hans Uhlmann. For 2 years maintained own studio at the Academy. Friendship with writer Günter Grass, and painter F. S. Sonnenstern. Met painters: Max Pechstein, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Carl Hofer, Max Kaus, and sculptors: Bernhard Heiliger, Renee Sintenis, and Richard Scheibe...

Beautiful abstract sculpture depicting a guitar player. Bronze on wood base measuring 15 x 9 x 4 inches. Actual cast piece without base measuring 17 x 7 x 3 inches. Signed indistinct...

NIGEL HALL Rydbo Maquette, 1989-2000 Painted Steel Unique The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by the artist Provenance: Christie's New York: J...

painted steel In the fields of sculpture and drawing, George Thiewes creates sharp, angular work with a focus on the interaction of light and dark. That interest began in the 1990s ...

painted steel In the fields of sculpture and drawing, George Thiewes creates sharp, angular work with a focus on the interaction of light and dark. That interest began in the 1990s ...

Characterizing herself as a Constructivist-turned-Minimalist, who “can’t do anything else” but make art, Jane Manus produces abstract sculptures that punctuate the spaces into which ...