William Crovello

Hakuin (Japanese Zen Buddhist) sculpture on plinth, ex GE art collection

1984

Lyman Kipp 1960s Constructivist/Minimalist Sculpture, 1968 Painted Wood Signed twice: signed and dated 1968 in black marker on the underside also bears artist's official name and dat...

Seymour Lipton Maquette for Laureate, ca. 1968-1969 Nickel silver on monel metal Unique 18 × 8 1/2 × 7 inches Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the previous owner, 1969 thence by descent Christie's New York: Monday, June 30, 2008 [Lot 00199] Acquired from the above Christie's sale This unique sculpture by important Abstract Expressionist sculptor Seymour Lipton is a maquette of the monumental sculpture "Laureate" - one of Lipton's most iconic and influential works located on the Riverwalk in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Laureate is a masterpiece that was commissioned by the Allen-Bradley Company in memory of Harry Lynde Bradley and as an enhancement for the newly constructed Performing Arts Center. It is located on the east bank of the Milwaukee River at 929 North Water Street. The Bradley family in Milwaukee were renowned patrons of modernist sculpture, known for their excellent taste who also founded an eponymous sculpture park. For reference only is an image of the monumental "Laureate" one of Milwaukee's most beloved public sculptures. According to the Smithsonian, which owns a different unique variation of this work, "The full-size sculpture Laureate was commissioned by the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts in Milwaukee. In the initial drawings, Seymour Lipton combined details from the architectural plan with a wide variety of images, ranging from musical instruments to a lighthouse on the island of Tobago. He transformed the basic shapes from these sketches into a welded sculpture, which evokes a figure composed of columns, harp strings, and coiled rope. Lipton created this piece to celebrate achievement in the arts. The dramatic silhouette commands your attention, reflecting the title Laureate, which means worthy of honor and distinction. The final version of the piece is over twelve feet high and stands out against the pale, flat buildings of the arts center.,," Provenance Marlborough-Gerson Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the previous owner, 1969 thence by descent Christie's New York: Monday, June 30, 2008 [Lot 00199] Acquired from the above Christie's sale About Seymour Lipton: Born in New York City in 1903, Seymour Lipton (1903-1986) grew up in a Bronx tenement at a time when much of the borough was still farmland. These rural surroundings enabled Lipton to explore the botanical and animal forms that would later become sources for his work. Lipton’s interest in the dialogue between artistic creation and natural phenomena was nurtured by a supportive family and cultivated through numerous visits to New York’s Museum of Natural History as well as its many botanical gardens and its zoos. In the early 1920s, with the encouragement of his family, Lipton studied electrical engineering at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and pursued a liberal arts education at City College. Ultimately, like fellow sculptor Herbert Ferber, Lipton became a dentist, receiving his degree from Columbia University in 1927. In the late 1920s, he began to explore sculpture, creating clay portraits of family members and friends. In addition to providing him with financial security, dentistry gave Lipton a foundation in working with metal, a material he would later use in his artwork. In the early 1930s, though, Lipton’s primary sculptural medium was wood. Lipton led a comfortable life, but he was also aware of the economic and psychological devastation the Depression had caused New York. In response, he generally worked using direct carving techniques—a form of sculpting where the artist “finds” the sculpture within the wood in the process of carving it and without the use of models and maquettes. The immediacy of this practice enabled Lipton to create a rich, emotional and visual language with which to articulate the desperation of the downtrodden and the unwavering strength of the disenfranchised. In 1935, he exhibited one such early sculpture at the John Reed Club Gallery in New York, and three years later, ACA Gallery mounted Lipton’s first solo show, which featured these social-realist-inspired wooden works. In 1940, this largely self-taught artist began teaching sculpture at the New School for Social Research, a position he held until 1965. In the 1940s, Lipton began to devote an increasing amount of time to his art, deviating from wood and working with brass, lead, and bronze. Choosing these metals for their visual simplicity, which he believed exemplified the universal heroism of the “everyman,” Lipton could also now explore various forms of abstraction. Lipton’s turn towards increasing abstraction in the 1940s allowed him to fully develop his metaphorical style, which in turn gave him a stronger lexicon for representing the horrors of World War II and questioning the ambiguities of human experience. He began his metal work with cast bronze sculptures, but, in 1946, he started welding sheet metal and lead. Lipton preferred welding because, as direct carving did with wood, this approach allowed “a more direct contact with the metal.”[ii] From this, Lipton developed the technique he would use for the remainder of his career: “He cut sheet metal, manipulated it to the desired shapes, then joined, soldered, or welded the pieces together. Next, he brazed a metal coating to the outside to produce a uniform texture.”[iii] In 1950, Lipton arrived at his mature style of brazing on Monel metal. He also began to draw extensively, exploring the automatism that abstract expressionist painters were boasting at the time. Like contemporaries such as Jackson Pollock, Lipton was strongly influenced by Carl Jung’s work on the unconscious mind and the regenerative forces of nature. He translated these two-dimensional drawings into three-dimensional maquettes that enabled him to revise his ideas before creating the final sculpture.The forms that Lipton produced during this period were often zoomorphic, exemplifying the tension between the souls of nature and the automatism of the machine. In the years following the 1950s, Lipton’s optimism began to rise, and the size of his work grew in proportion. The oxyacetylene torch—invented during the Second World War—allowed him to rework the surfaces of metal sculptures, thus eliminating some of the risks involved with producing large-scale finished works. In 1958, Lipton was awarded a solo exhibition at the Venice Biennale and was thus internationally recognized as part of a small group of highly regarded avant-garde constructivist sculptors. In 1960, he received a prestigious Guggenheim Award, which was followed by several prominent public commissions, including his heroic Archangel, currently residing in Lincoln Center’s David Geffen Hall. A number of important solo exhibitions of his work followed at The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC (1964); the Milwaukee Art Center and University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (1969); the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond (1972); the Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY (1973); the Herbert E. Johnson Museum of Art of Cornell University in Ithaca, NY (1973); the National Collection of Fine Arts, Smithsonian Institution (now the Smithsonian American Art Museum) in Washington, DC (1978); and a retrospective in 1979 at The Jewish Museum in New York. In 1982 and 1984 alone, two exhibitions of his sculpture, organized respectively by the Mint Museum (Charlotte, NC) and the Hillwood Art Gallery of Long Island University (Greenvale, NY), traveled extensively across museums and university galleries around the nation. In 2000, the traveling exhibition An American Sculptor: Seymour Lipton was first presented by the Palmer Museum of Art of Pennsylvania State University in University Park. Most recently, in 2009, the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill, NC mounted The Guardian and the Avant-Garde: Seymour Lipton’s Sentinel II in Context. Since 2004, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery has been the exclusive representative of the Estate of Seymour Lipton and has presented two solo exhibitions of his work—Seymour Lipton: Abstract Expressionist Sculptor (2005) and Seymour Lipton: Metal (2008). In 2013, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery presented Abstract Expressionism, In Context: Seymour Lipton, which included twelve major sculptures by the artist, along with works by Charles Alston, Norman Bluhm, Beauford Delaney, Willem de Kooning, Jay DeFeo, Michael Goldberg, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Lee Krasner, Norman Lewis, Conrad Marca-Relli, Boris Margo, Alfonso Ossorio, Richard Pousette-Dart, Milton Resnick, Charles Seliger...

Robert Indiana LOVE (Official Artist Copyright and Foundation Stamp), 2011 Brushed Aluminum sculpture (Red) Stamped by artist's estate, Stam...

Nathaniel Kaz Bronze Sculpture to Isaac Bashevis Singer for Arts in Judaism Award, 1966 Bronze, Square wooden base, Metal tag Signed and dated "66" to back of bronze portion of the w...

Artist Len Klikunas paints to modify experienced reality through visual perception. His art is a mix of art and architecture, hovering between painting and sculpture. It employs shiz...

Len Klikunas paints minimalist artworks to modify experienced reality through visual perception. The Blocks series is a mix of art and architecture, hovering between painting and scu...

Artist Len Klikunas creates meditative minimalist sculptural artworks that modify experienced reality through visual perception. His art is a mix of art and architecture, hovering between painting and sculpture, energy and matter. It employs shizen (自然): the Japanese concept of naturalness, absence of pretense, or artificiality. Material is stretched over a supporting three-dimensional framework, like a tent, and coated with paint allowing shadows and reflections to fill the spaces in between. This sculptural three-dimensional 18-inches square and 5-inch deep post-minimalist artwork is wired and ready to hang. It is created with mixed media on canvas, stretched over a three-dimensional wooden form. The artist finishes the sides of this artwork as a continuation of the front and signs and titles the artwork on the back. Convenient local Los Angeles area delivery. Affordable worldwide shipping for US and international art collectors. A certificate of authenticity issued by the art gallery is included. Klikunas focuses on the larger idea behind his original abstract minimalist artworks. The work is characterized by “mindful artlessness” and simplicity. The natural-like radiation that comes from the structure of the materials and color schemes expresses calmness. With a fusion of art and architecture, Klikunas presents compositions focused on abstract reliefs based on regularity and geometry that defy conventional perceptions. Through strategic placement and a rich color palette that also includes monochrome paintings, he creates three-dimensional structures that engage viewers in a captivating visual experience. Len Klikunas' sculptural minimalist works are represented by Artspace Warehouse Los Angeles. They have been included in numerous exhibitions at galleries and art fairs as well as private and public collections throughout the world. REPRESENTATION Artspace Warehouse, Los Angeles, California EDUCATION 1966 BA Stanford University 1970 MA California State University Fullerton 1973 Photography Mt. Hood Community College SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2018 Lacy Lines, The District, Boise, Idaho Horizons, Landscapes, The District, Boise, Idaho 2013 Block in the Void, The District, Boise, Idaho 2012 Back of the Light, The District, Boise, Idaho 1979 Nudes by Klikunas, Courtyard Gallery, Portland, Oregon 1976 Solar Votives, Clackamas College Gallery, Oregon City, Oregon GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2022 “Lines In Motion”, Artspace Warehouse, Los Angeles, CA 2020 Midnight Blue, Artspace Warehouse, Los Angeles, CA Reflections and Shadows, Meridian Library, ID Behind the Red Door, Initial Point Gallery, ID 2019 Affordable Art Fair, New York, NY Roots, Nampa Civic Center, Nampa, ID Binary Response, Artspace Warehouse, Los Angeles, CA After Dark: A Duality, Nampa Civic Center, Nampa, ID 2018 Affordable Art Fair, New York, NY Artspace Warehouse, Los Angeles, CA Art Palm Springs, CA 2017 Artspace Warehouse, Los Angeles, CA 2016 6 by Six, Art Source Gallery, Boise, Idaho (juried) This American Life, Treasure Valley Artists Alliance, Boise, Idaho (juried) Celebrating Private Idaho, Treasure Valley Artists Alliance, Boise, Idaho (juried) Inner Workings, Surel's Place, Winston C. Mitchell and Surel L. Mitchell Family Foundation honorarium, Garden City, Idaho (juried) 2015 Hunting and Gathering Exhibition, Treasure Valley Artists Alliance, Boise, Idaho (juried) Artspace Warehouse, Los Angeles, California 2nd 2015 Showcase Competition, winner, Artslant Bellingham National Salon des Refusés, Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, Washington 2011 Elon University Gallery, Elon, North Carolina 2010 Idaho Triennial, Boise Art Museum, Boise, Idaho TV & FILM The Kardashians, Hulu 911 S5, Fox Minx, HBO American Housewife S5 The Laundromat, Netflix Good Time Charlie, TBS PUBLICATIONS 2010 ArtDaily 2010 Boise Weekly 2010 Sustain + Expand, Boise Art Museum, Boise, Idaho 2010 Idaho Statesman, Boise, Idaho, Taking the Pulse of Idaho’s Art...

Len Klikunas creates sculptural minimalist artworks to modify experienced reality through visual perception. His original artwork is a mix of art and architecture, hovering between p...