James Bearden

Brutalist Sculpture, Gilded Steel and Bronze

Bella Feldman (American, b. 1930), Untitled, metal 2-wheeled cart with metal cables, (Provenance: Allan Stone Gallery, New York, NY) gallery label affixed affixed verso, overall: 37"h x 48"l x 37"w. Provenance: Private Collection Bella Feldman is an American sculptor whose work addresses the themes of sexuality, war, and the persistent anxiety of the industrial age. Feldman is known for pioneering the use of glass with steel. Her work has affinities with Surrealism, Post-Minimalism, and the Feminist art movement, although she has no formal affiliation with these. A Professor Emeritus at the California College of the Arts, Feldman lives and works in Oakland, CA and London, England. Bella Feldman was born in 1930 in New York City to a family of working-class Jewish immigrants from Poland. She grew up in the Bronx tenements. Feldman attended The High School of Music & Art in Manhattan during World War II. Students were required to visit museums and galleries as part of the curriculum. When Feldman was thirteen, she visited her first art museum, the Museum of Modern Art. There, she saw Meret Oppenheim’s Object (1936), the fur-lined cup and saucer, and was struck by her strong psychological response to this work. Other early influences included Alberto Giacometti’s The Palace at 4 a.m. (1932) and the sculpture of David Smith. One of Feldman’s earliest sculptures Warrior (1952) pays tribute to Giacometti. During the Holocaust, Feldman lost numerous family members who remained in Poland, an experience that helped shape her worldview. This includes her life-long preoccupation with war, and the overwhelming effects of the military-industrial complex. Feldman received a BA from Queens College, City University of New York. She married Leonard Feldman at age 18, and moved to California with him in 1951 where they both accepted teaching positions. Feldman has two children, Nina Feldman, born 1954 and Ethan Feldman, born 1956. In 1965, Feldman started teaching at the California College of the Arts. In 1971 she and her family moved to Uganda, East Africa on a grant from the E. L. Cabot Trust Fund at Harvard University. Feldman spent two years teaching art in Uganda prior to the genocidal war in that country. Upon her return to CCA, she faced gender discrimination and a threat to her job. Her successful fight to retain her position prompted her to later become an advocate for other women faculty, who she helped to achieve equity and job security. Feldman was awarded an MA in 1973 from San Jose State University. Her teachers were Sam Richardson...

This piece is unsigned. Irving Lehman (1900-1983) was an American Jewish painter, sculptor, engraver, and designer. Born in Kiev in then Russia, Lehman studied at the Art Students League, Cooper Union and the National Academy of Art and spent much of his working life in New York City. Part of the Abstract Expressionist school, he worked in oil and watercolor as a painter and in metal and steel as a sculptor; his works have been shown in galleries in England, France, Italy, Israel and Japan, and were included in an international traveling exhibition in Europe in 1951. Like many other artists of his generation, he painted for the WPA and then adopted a more abstract style after WWII. Lehman spent much of his career in NYC. He had his first exhibition at ACA Gallery in 1934. He also exhibited at the Whitney, National Academy, PAFA, Brooklyn Museum, Chicago Art Institute, and others. This work contains Constructivist elements anticipating the more gestural abstraction of the post-WWII New York Abstract Expressionist School. Member of American Art Congress, worked near Woodstock and in Columbia County...

Silvana Cenci, internationally renowned explosive sculptor, died October 1, 2000 at her home in Gray. Ms. Cenci, who was born in Florence, Italy, before World War II, married Stuart Church and moved to the U.S. permanently in 1959. She lived in Boston for many years, where she was a founder of the Brookline Art Center and a founding member of Summerthing. She exhibited widely throughout Europe and the U.S., and her work is in many museums and public and private collections. After moving to the States, Ms. Cenci began working with new technologies from the aircraft industry, and with explosives. She moved to Northwood, NH, in the early 60s, and pursued and perfected her revolutionary experimentation with explosive sculpture in stainless steel. A native of Italy, she lived most of her life in America where she became internationally known, primarily for using dynamite to blast images into stainless steel and finishing some pieces with pure gold. The pieces created with dynamite were often utilized by architects. One piece titled “Wheels in Motion” hung in Boston’s South Station. Education and Training Accademia di Belle Arti, Florence, Italy Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, Paris Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon Selected Individual Exhibitions Galleria Numero, Florence, Italy Galleria San Carlo, Naples, Italy Galleria d'Arte Totti, Milan, Italy Galeria Beno, Zurich, Switzerland Nova Gallery, Boston Weeden Gallery, Boston Capricorn Gallery, New York City Roach-Hoffman Gallery, Naples, Florida Bristol Art Museum, Bristol, Rhode Island, retrospective Frank Tanzer Gallery, Boston Symphony Hall, Boston Musica Viva, Cambridge, Massachusetts Los Llanos Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff Selected Group Exhibitions "Oregon Artists," Lincoln County Art Center, Lincoln, Oregon "Exhibition of Painting and Sculpture," Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Washington "West Coast Sculptors," Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon "Mostra Nazionale del Bianco e Nero," Museo Civico Castello Urasino, Catania, Italy "New England Art Today," Northwestern University, Boston "New England Sculptors Association," Boston City Hall, Boston "Silvana Cenci and Calvin Libby," Bristol Art Museum, Bristol, Rhode Island "Adele Seronde and Silvana Cenci," Weeden Gallery, Boston "Contemporary Italian Art-Italian Heritage," Boston City Hall, Boston, catalog "Explosion of Form, Color, Imagination: Works by Silvana Cenci Selected Awards First Honorable Mention, "Design in Transit," Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority Competition, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts Research in Creative Art Grant, Blanche E. Colman Foundation, Boston, Massachusetts Statue of Victory, World Culture Prize for Letters, Arts and Sciences, Centro Studi e Ricerche delle Nazioni, Salsomaggiore Terme, Italy Harvard-pedigreed architect Harlow Carpenter built the Bundy in 1962. The venue's first decade was lively with exhibitions that featured a large cast of artists, including Dino Basaldella, Judith Brown, Silvana Cenci, Xavier Corbero...

STEEL ROOM, 1989, steel sculpture, 8 x 8 x 8”, signed and dated. Peter Lodato was born in 1946 in Los Angeles, California, has exhibited extensively and received significant acclai...

Jesús Curiá Perez Horse I bronze and artificial stone 23h x 19.75w x 8.25d in 58.42h x 50.16w x 20.95d cm JCP061 It is seemingly easier to identify with the ideas and thoughts of a...

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Jesús Curiá Perez Snow bronze and methacrylate 29.50h x 8.75w x 7d in 74.93h x 22.23w x 17.78d cm ed. 1/8 JCP057 Jesús Curiá's sculptures arouse something more than purely aesthetic...