Alexander Daniel

Seated Lady

1990

Charles Edouard Richefeu (1868-1945) A stunning dated 1926. A faun and nude woman dancing. Signed RICHEFEU in the bronze. Foundry mark stamp "R. COTTIN & FILS Paris Bronze". Definitely inspired by Diagilev Russian Ballet and Nijinsky dancer on Claude Debussy...

Demetre Haralamb Chiparus (also known as Dumitru Chiparus) (16 September 1886 in Dorohoi, Romania - 22 January 1947 in Paris, France) was a Romanian Art Deco* era sculptor who lived and worked in Paris. He was born in Romania, the son of Haralamb and Saveta. In 1909 he went to Italy, where he attended the classes of Italian sculptor Raffaello Romanelli. In 1912 he traveled to Paris to attend the Ecole des Beaux Arts* to pursue his art at the classes of Antonin Mercie and Jean Boucher. Demetre Chiparus died in 1947 and was buried in Bagneux cemetery, just south of Paris. The first sculptures of Chiparus were created in the realistic style and were exhibited at the Salon of 1914. He employed the combination of bronze and ivory, called chryselephantine*, to great effect. Most of his renowned works were made between 1914 and 1933. The first series of sculptures manufactured by Chiparus were the series of the children. The mature style of Chiparus took shape beginning in the 1920s. His sculptures are remarkable for their bright and outstanding decorative effect. Dancers of the Russian Ballet, French theatre, and early motion pictures were among his more notable subjects and were typified by a long, slender, stylized appearance. His work was influenced by an interest in Egypt, after Pharaoh Tutankhamen's tomb was excavated. He worked primarily with the Edmond Etling and Cie Foundry in Paris administrated by Julien Dreyfus. Les Neveux de J. Lehmann was the second foundry which constantly worked with Chiparus and produced the sculptures of his models. Chiparus rarely exhibited at the Salon. In 1923 he showed his Javelin Thrower, and in 1928 exhibited his Ta-Keo dancer. During the period of Nazi persecution and the World War II, the foundries discontinued production of work by Chiparus. The economic situation of that time was not favorable to the development of decorative arts and circumstances for many sculptors worsened. Since the early 1940s almost no works of Chiparus were sold, but he continued sculpting for his own pleasure, depicting animals in the Art Deco style. At the 1942 Paris Salon, the plaster sculptures Polar Bear and American Bison were exhibited, and in 1943 he showed a marble Polar Bear and plaster Pelican. Sculptures of Dimitri Chiparus represent the classical manifestation of Art Deco style in decorative bronze ivory sculpture. Traditionally, four factors of influence over the creative activity of the artist can be distinguished: Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, ancient Egyptian art, and French theatre. Early motion pictures were among his more notable subjects and were typified by figures with a long, slender, stylized appearance. Some of his sculptures were directly inspired by Russian dancers. Quite often, Chiparus used the photos of Russian and French dancers, stars and models from fashion magazines of his time. After the tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in 1922, the art of ancient Egypt...

CLAUDE LALANNE (1925-2019) Pomme Bouche circa 1975 Ed. 250 pcs Bronze with a golden patina 13.5 x 12 x 11.5 cm Monogrammed, signed and numbered underside : CL, Lalanne, 177/250 Certi...

Size includes wood mounting. George Aarons (born Gregory Podubisky, in St. Petersburg, Russia, 1896 - died in Gloucester, Massachusetts 1980) was a distinguished sculptor who lived and taught in Gloucester, Massachusetts, for many years until his death in 1980. He had, many students in the area and he designed Gloucester's 350th Anniversary Commemorative Medal. Aarons moved from Russia to the United States when he was ten. His father was a merchant. He began taking drawing classes during evenings at Dearborn Public School in Boston as a teenager and went on to study at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1916. Aarons later moved to New York City to study with Jo Davidson, and other Paris-trained masters at the Beaux-Arts Institute. He eventually returned to the Boston area and established studios in Brookline and Gloucester, Massachusetts. During his lifetime, he was recognized internationally and won several prestigious awards. Aarons had studios in Brookline, Massachusetts and Gloucester, Massachusetts where he produced large bronze and marble figures and wood carvings. He produced several projects for the Works Progress Administration including a group of three figures for the Public Garden (Boston), a longshoreman, fisherman and foundry worker, as well as a large relief (1938) for the South Boston Housing Project and façade of the Baltimore Hebrew Congregational Building (1956). His works are at the Museum of Art in Ein Harod, Israel; Fitchburg Art Museum in Massachusetts, Musée de St. Denis in France; Hilles Library at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Hillel House at Boston University in Massachusetts. He did reliefs for Siefer Hall at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts (1950); Edward Filene (the founder of Filene's Department Store and a philanthropist) on the Boston Common; Fireman's Memorial in Beverly, Massachusetts; a memorial to Mitchell Frieman in Boston; the U.S. Post Office in Ripley, Mississippi; and at the Cincinnati Telephone Building; the Combined Jewish Philanthropies building in Boston (1965); and a commemorative medal for the 350th Anniversary of the City of Gloucester, Massachusetts (1972). Characteristic of his era, George Aarons was among the foreign-born American sculptors of the early 20th century who started their careers as academicians and evolved into modernists and increasingly abstract artists. Over thirty pieces spanning the length of this sculptor's career were featured in this exhibition, including work in various medium bronze, wood and original plasters. Like his contemporaries, Aarons experimented with direct carving in wood, and he was one of the few academically trained sculptors who consistently cut his own works in marble. His early work was classically inspired figurative work, along with sensitive portraits. Some of his most powerful sculpture comes from his middle period, when he worked through his emotional pain following the global realization of the Jewish Holocaust. He depicted humanity deep anxiety over this tragedy with figures that are at once symbolically charged and movingly beautiful. Aarons late work consists of radically simplified forms that continue to reference the human form and often are carved directly in wood and stone. Aarons summered and taught classes on Cape Ann for many years before moving to Gloucester full-time with his wife about 1950. While Aarons is best known locally for his domestic-scale works, he also executed numerous monumental, public commissions that can be found throughout the United States in cities such as Washington, D.C.; Baltimore, Maryland; and Cincinnati, Ohio; as well as in France and Israel. As noted in a Gloucester Daily Times Article, Aarons wanted his sculptures to honor the struggles and nobility of people and rail against the evil done against them. And that was why, even as his work grew more and more abstract, stylized and simplified, he never left behind the form of the human figure that had been his focus from his earliest works. Aarons told the Gloucester Daily Times in September 1954 that he found it hard to remember at just what age he started studying art, but he recalled that the nude model had to partially dress when he was in class because he was so young. He initially studied painting and drawing at the museum school, but he once said he became fascinated by sculpture when he met an established sculptor at the Copley Society in Boston who invited Aarons to his studio and offered him some clay to "play around" with. After he graduated, he apprenticed under sculptors Richard Brooks, Robert Baker and Solon Borglum. He worked as a carpenter, shipbuilder, dishwasher and chimney sweep. He fashioned architectural decorations, including figures for fountains and now and then a few commissioned portraits. He returned to Boston by the early 1920s and began to exhibit his own works and get commissions for portraits, fountains and reliefs. His sculptures from this time are dreamy and romantic in the realistic, academic style of the time. A painted portrait of the young Aarons that is included in the North Shore Arts Association exhibit shows a determined fellow with dark brown hair, a suit and bow tie. However, in 1922, this determined young artist was living with his parents on Calder Street in Dorchester. In the 1930s, Aarons adopted the streamlined, monumental style of the socialist works of the time. Aarons made money, as he would all his life, from commissions, selling his personal work and teaching sculpture, but the Depression of the 1930s was tough for everyone. So Aarons found work though the federal Works Progress Administration, one of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs. He received his first major commission when he was asked to create a public sculpture for the South Boston Harbor Village public housing project around 1937. He was elevated to the position of supervisor for the project and received a corresponding $5 pay increase to make his weekly salary $32. The raise convinced him he was fit to marry and he proposed to Gertrude Band, an attractive brunette dancer whom he had been dating for more than a year. They were married before the Harbor Village project was dedicated on Labor Day 1938. Aarons' design featured a brawny, larger-than-lifesize fisherman, longshoreman and a laborer flanked by a boy and girl at either end to portray the children who would live in the apartments. Aarons elected to do the piece in cast stone to employ carpenters and laborers as well as craftsman for a total of 10 men. In his sculpture, Aarons focused more and more on the theme of oppressed people as he worried about the spread of fascism and Nazism during the 1930s, World War II and after. He had done pieces during the mid-1930s about the oppression of African-Americans, including "Negro Head," which is in the North Shore Art Association retrospective. After the war, he also delved into Jewish themes and became increasingly known as an important Jewish artist, leading to commissions from Jewish organizations across the country and abroad. "He gets into raw emotion. Some people describe him as an expressionist because of the emotion (in his work)," Reynolds says. But Aarons, also sculpted sensual sexual nudes...