Wood Figurative Sculptures

Popeye the Sailor is a European sculpture in the Hagenauer style made of Ebony wood and metal in the Art Deco style. We have had a few pieces in this treatment, including style and materials. They are scarce to find. This one is exciting since it is an homage to the character of Popeye. This sculpture has a slightly cubist feeling with black ebony and silver treatment, including the navy anchor on its arm, obviously inspired by the original Popeye. It’s not a widely known fact that a natural person inspired E.C. Segar, the creator of Popeye. We have discovered that it was fashioned to resemble this man, Frank “Rocky” Fiegel, whose parents immigrated from Poland to the United States. Rocky was born in 1868-1947, and as an adult, he joined the Navy. He was considered very strong and smoked a pipe, one of the characteristics of the cartoon Popeye, which became such an essential icon of protection, not allowing bullying or being bullied. This Popeye Sailor sculpture...

Hagenauer wood sculpture Head of African Woman. This beautiful sculpture was designed and manufactured by Hagenauer in Vienna in the 1930s during the Ar...

This sumptuous engraved wooden panel depicting panthers in the bush was created by N.R. Brunet (France, 20th Century). Art Deco design typical of the period, N.R. Brunet is known for...

Art Deco French bronze sculpture of panther and gazelle by Alexander Ouline portrays animals in action, a kind of abstract forest floor in bronze all mounted on a wooden base. Ouline...

Referenced in Uricariu & Bulat "Antonovici" on page 134, this bronze sculpture by Constantin Antonovici plays on a common shape composition of the artist's practice. At their core, t...

Two Figures (Mother and son) 9" x 17" terracotta sculpture, signed lower left mounted to wood panel, 15 1/2" x 23 1/2" George Aarons (born Gregory Podubisky, in St. Petersburg, Russ...

American sculptor Joseph Martinek was born in Chicago in 1915. He was a second generation apprentice to Auguste Rodin. He studied sculpture at the State Industrial School of Art, Pra...

Florencio Gelabert Y Perez (Cuban, 1904-1995) Hand carved, signed; 1979 Materials: Cuban wood (mahogany?) Dimensions 23 X 4 X 4 inches Label affixed to underside: National Registry of Cultural Assets of the Republic of Cuba Ministry of Culture. Provenance: Art Master Collection, Miami, Florida. Florencio Gelabert, with a style reminiscent of Art Deco and Art Nouveau in a Latin American Expressionist stylization. Carved wood sculpture. Depicts a modernist stylized form of a man in a streamline moderne style. José Florencio Gelabert Pérez (Caibarien, 1904 - Havana, 1995) Cuban musician, sculptor, draftsman and teacher. He graduated from the San Alejandro National Academy of Fine Arts in 1934. He received numerous awards, mentions and recognitions in Fine Arts Halls and Circles. His works are in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Fine Arts. Florencio Gelabert is a renowned sculptor, who made more than twenty solo exhibitions beginning in 1929, several in the National Museum of Fine Arts, and participated in more than thirty collectives in Cuba, Spain and Brazil, the latter in the Sao Paulo Biennial. he traveled from Caibarién to Santa Clara in 1928 to audition to enter the famous San Alejandro Fine Arts School in Havana. He obtained one of the five vacancies. Already in the Cuban capital, he combined fine arts and music. When he graduated, he became a professor in San Alejandro and the academy’s principal in 1960. With a calling common to wood sculptors –which began with his primary school carving carpentry classes and the active life of his home town’s shipyards, his chisels and gouges feverishly turned mahogany, “ácana” and ebony into female heads with black African features dating back to 1930. In 1938 he used his savings to explore Europe: France (Paris, Marseilles), Italy (Naples, Rome, Florence, and Venice), Belgium (Malina). His encounter with the works by Aristide Maillol, Auguste Rodin, Ossip Zadkine, Constantin Brancusi and even with Wifredo Lam, who was also born in another Cuban coastal area, Sagua la Grande, and his encounter with the nude marble David sculpture...

American sculptor Joseph Martinek was born in Chicago in 1915. He was a second generation apprentice to Auguste Rodin. He studied sculpture at the State Industrial School of Art, Pra...

Valentin Abad est un artiste français. Son travail repose sur la volonté de créé un support visuel, une forme tangible aux conflits de la conditions humaine. Il propose de faire exis...

Exceptional and expressively carved solid walnut near life Size statue of nude woman raised on attached fluted column pedestal base in overall beautifully aged original rich surface ...

This French Art-Deco hand-carved wooden panel or wall-mounted sculpture features a stunning Venetian mask. This high-dimensional panel is made of natural wood with a warm tone and re...

American sculptor Joseph Martinek was born in Chicago in 1915. He was a second generation apprentice to Auguste Rodin. He studied sculpture at the State Industrial School of Art, Pra...

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...

Presenting an original inlaid marquetry wood tray/sculpture by French artist Pierre Lardin. Pierre Lardin executed his work in wood, creating ...

Artist Enrique Alférez was born in Zacatecas, Mexico and lived nearly the entire 20th century. After service in the Mexican Revolution as a youth, he emigrated to Texas, studied in C...

Artist Enrique Alférez was born in Zacatecas, Mexico and lived nearly the entire 20th century. After service in the Mexican Revolution as a youth, he emigrated to Texas, studied in C...

Artist : Genevieve E. Flynn Title : Golden Botrus Teapot Materials : Sterling Silver, Rosewood Date : 2016 Dimensions : 4.5 x 4 x 4.25 in. Description : This Saul Bell International Award finalist teapot was inspired from Flynn's love of mineral specimens with botryoidal crystal structures as a young girl. The body was raised from a single sheet of sterling silver, using chasing and repousse techniques. 23 1/2 karat gold leaf is applied over the surface of the "bumps." The handle is made of Pau Rosewood. ONE OF A KIND. Award winning silversmith, Genevieve Flynn, has been working in precious metals for 44 years creating hollow-ware and art jewelry family heirlooms. Flynn has been invited to create numerous private commissions, including an intricately chased and engraved hand mirror that was presented to music industry personality, Paula Abdul and a commemorative 1985 World Series pin for the late Ewing Kauffman, then owner of the Kansas City Royals and Marion Laboratories. contemporary art, ceramics, contemporary ceramics, contemporary fine art, ceramic artists, sculpture, contemporary sculpture, jewelry, contemporary jewelry, jewelry art, Margaret De Patta, René Lalique, Bruce Metcalf, fine art jewelry, Suzanne Belperron, Stanley Lechtzin, Art Smith, Margret Craver...

Presenting A stunning original WPA wood sculpture by Chicago artist Burton Freund. Freund worked for the FAP(Federal Arts Project) in Chicago in the 1930's as well as an accomplished...

Presenting A stunning original WPA wood sculpture by Chicago artist Burton Freund. Freund worked for the FAP(Federal Arts Project) in Chicago in the 1930's as well as an accomplished illustrator for some of the countries leading magazines. "The Mechanic...