Helen Shirk

Helen Shirk Sculpture Hand Crafted Studio Vessel, Copper Patina, Colored Pencils

1997

"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.”

TEMPIO BRETTON: from the catalogue MONUMENTA, 19th International Sculpture Biennale, Antwerp, Belgium. Tempio Bretton was created in homage to the celebrated English landscapist Capability Brown for the occasion of an exhibition at Bretton Hall in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park , a park in the style of the great master of English garden design. The inclusion in the English garden of a temple ruin, or "eye-catcher," (architectural folly) was used to draw the eye and mind to a focus in time and space, present the beholder with an immediate relationship to an historic past made new within his or her own surroundings, and create a depth of space never before seen in garden design. I took the idea of the temple ruin eye-catcher and reduced it to a scale at the point where architecture and sculpture merged. Tempio Bretton is not capacious enough to walk into, yet it is considerably larger than a man. One view of it presents a knot of golden columns clustered together, topped by a dome shape. The only clue from this side to the temple's non-conformity to historic principle is a sharp notch cut into the square base. Viewed from the opposite side, the cluster of columns capped by an angular top opens up as if to welcome someone in, yet the mysterious core is still impenetrable. These contradictions articulate a confrontation between past and present, and an exciting truth. The past is always at the heart of our constructions in the present. Walter Dusenbery...

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...

Hand made in israel handwrought tray, platter in Silver plated copper modernist tray, engraving and hammer work, with a whimsical mod lion and design decorations. From the YAAD works...

Mathias Goeritz (German Mexican, 1915-1990) Bronze sculpture Signed and numbered Dimensions: (approximate) Height: 10 inches, Width: 4 inches, Depth: 2 inches. This is a cast bronze sculpture in an amorphous figure shape, quite heavy. Reminiscent of the biomorphic sculpture of Hans Jean Arp. This came from an estate and bears his signature It is not dated. there is no accompanying documentation. it is priced accordingly. Werner Mathias Goeritz Brunner (Danzig, Germany, April 4th, 1915/ now Gdansk, Poland – Mexico City, Mexico; August 4th, 1990). Mathias Goeritz has had several gallery and museum exhibitions, including at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and at the Museo Experimental El Eco. Numerous works by the artist have been sold at auction, including 'MENSAJE' sold at Sotheby's New York 'Latin American Modern Art' in 2015 for $466,000. There have been Several articles about Mathias Goeritz, including 'LACMA remaps Latin America' written by Suzanne Muchnic for the Los Angeles Times. Painter, sculptor and Mexican architect associated with the trend of constructive abstraction. He studied medicine at the University of Berlin, but this only lasted a year. The concerns of the young student were aesthetic in nature so he he studied figurative drawing at the Berlin Charlottenburg School of Art. Some of his friends and colleagues were the sculptor Ernst Barlach, painter George Grosz and draughtsman Kaethe Kollwitz. Goeritz studied philosophy and history of art, discipline in which earned a doctorate. He travelled in France, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Austria and Italy, among other countries. It is known that he left Germany to live in Tetuan, Morocco in 1941 and then Granada, Spain in 1945. In 1946 he had a large exhibition in the Sala Clan in Madrid under the pseudonym "Mago". Two years later, living in Santilla del Mar, Spain he was a founder of the Escuela de Altamira. The following year he married Marianne Gast, writer and his companion for more than fifteen years. In Spain followed his artistic work by important artists of the avant-garde. Of Jewish descent, he found refuge from the Second World War in Mexico where in 1949 he was invited by Ignacio Diaz Morales to be a part of the faculty of the School of Architecture at the Universidad de Jalisco. In 1953 he wrote the "Manifiesto de la Arquitectura Emocional" (The Emotional Architecture Manifesto), where he points out that only achieving true emotions from architecture can it then be considered an art form. In Mexico he entered controversy with the artistic stablishment of that country; in an open letter, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros described him as "an impostor without the most insignificant talent and preparation" to be an artist. Despite this, in 1957 he was elected director of visual design of the National School of architecture This same year he founded the Museo del Eco in Mexico City. In 1961 Goeritz participated at the Galería Antonio Souza in a group exhibition, Los hartos, for which he published another manifesto. Other participants included Jose Luis Cuevas and Pedro Friedeberg, with whom he was instrumental in establishing abstraction and other modern trends in Mexico.His work is included in the Gelman Collection of modern and contemporary Mexican art based in Cuernavaca, Mexico. Established by Jacques and Natasha Gelman in 1943 as a private collection. it includes many iconic works by major Mexican Modernists including Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Leonora Carrington, Rufino Tamayo and Francisco Toledo, Lola Alvarez...

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...

A remarkable and unique format bronze of unique cast that could be great for a mantle or console table. In Robert Cook's book entitled “Waxing and Waning” he discusses three castings...

Ernest Tino Trova "Black Falling Man with Form" 1996 Bronze Ed. 1/3 Signed, Dated and Numbered Verso approx. 16 x 8.5 x 16 inches Known for his Falling Man series in abstract figura...

A unique root creature sculpture made from lacquered wood with colored pencil by American artist Jon Brooks (20th century). Brooks was born in Manchester, N...

Vendedor de pájaros - Bird seller Made with natural clay, copper wire and polychrome painting. Hand-modeled technique and cooked in an oven. LISTING =================================== 1 Ceramic Sculpture of a Bird seller =================================== DETAILS =================================== Time of Preparation: 2.5 months Made: Izuca de Matamoros, Puebla, México. Dimensions: 8" x 10" x 5" in or 20 x 25 x 13 cm Artisan: Taller Alfonso Castillo Orta...

Familia del Mezcal - Mezcal Family Made with natural clay, copper wire and polychrome painting. Hand-modeled technique and cooked in an oven. LISTING =================================== 1 Ceramic Sculpture of a Mezcal Family =================================== DETAILS =================================== Time of Preparation: 2.5 months Made: Izuca de Matamoros, Puebla, México. Dimensions: 7" x 8" x 5" in or 17" x 20" x 13 cm Artisan: Taller Alfonso Castillo Orta...

Orí Yucateca, 2015 - 2024 by José Ignacio Suarez Solis From the Series Sculptures Carving, assembling and painting (granite, wood, iron, acrylic, zinc plate and copper wire) Size: 19...