Minna Harkavy

Bronze Modernist Sculpture Portrait, Gertrude Stein by Minna Harkavy WPA Artist

c.1930-1940

Chaim Gross (American, 1904-1991) Patinated cast bronze sculpture, Balancing, Mother and child signed and editioned 1/6 mounted on black marble plinth 14"h x 11.5"w x 8"d (height w...

Eugenie Gershoy (January 1, 1901 – May 8, 1986) was an American sculptor and watercolorist. Eugenie Gershoy was born in Krivoy Rog, Russia (Krivoi Rog, Ukraine) and emigrated to New York City in the United States as a child in 1903. Considered somewhat of a child prodigy, Gershoy was copying Old Master drawings at the age of 5. Her interest and talent in art was encouraged from a very young age. Aided by scholarships, she studied at the Art Students League under Alexander Stirling Calder, Leo Lentelli, Kenneth Hayes Miller, and Boardman Robinson. Around this time, she created a group of portrait figurines of her fellow artists, including Arnold Blanch, Lucile Blanch, Raphael Soyer, William Zorach, Concetta Scaravaglione, and Emil Ganso, which were exhibited as a group at the Whitney Museum of American Art. At age 17, she was awarded the Saint-Gaudens Medal for fine draughtsmanship. Early in her career she became an active member of the Woodstock art colony. In Woodstock she experimented by sculpting in the profusion of indigenous materials that she found. Working with fieldstone, oak and chestnut, Gershoy created works based on classic formulae. As she became more interested in the dynamism of everyday life, she found that these materials and her idiom were too restrictive. By the time Gershoy came to Woodstock in 1921 her own individual artistic style was already evident in her sculptures. Eugenie Gershoy worked in stone, bronze, terracotta, plaster and papier-mache. Gershoy’s sculptures were mainly figurative in nature and many of her artist peers such as Carl Walters, Raphael and Moses Soyer, William Zorach and Lucille Blanch, became her subjects. Eugenie Gershoy’s works on paper should not be overlooked. She was the winner of the Gaudens Medal for Fine Draughtsmanship at the tender age of 17. Gershoy married Jewish Romanian-born artist Harry Gottlieb. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the pair kept a studio in Woodstock, New York. There, Gershoy was influenced by sculptor John Flanagan, who lived and worked nearby. From 1936 to 1939, Gershoy worked for the WPA Federal Art Project. She collaborated with Max Spivak on murals for the children's recreation room of the Queens Borough Public Library in Astoria, New York. She developed a mixture of wheat paste, plaster, and egg tempera, which she used in polychrome papier-mâché sculptures; she was the only New York sculptor to work in polychrome at this time. She also designed cement and mosaic sculptures of animals and figures to be placed in New York City playgrounds. Alongside others employed by the FAP, she participated in a sit-down strike in Washington, DC, to advocate for better pay and improved working conditions for the projects' artists. Gershoy's first solo exhibition was held at the Robinson Gallery in New York in 1940. She moved to San Francisco in 1942, and began teaching ceramics at the California School of Fine Arts in 1946. In 1950, she studied at the artists' colony at Yaddo. Gershoy traveled extensively throughout her life. She visited England and France in the early 1930s, and worked in Paris in 1951. She traveled to Mexico and Guatemala in the late 1940s, and also toured Africa, India, and the Orient in 1955. In 1977, Gershoy dedicated a sculpture to Audrey McMahon, who was actively involved in the creation of the Federal Art Project and served as its regional director in New York, in recognition of the work McMahon provided struggling artists in the 1930s. Gershoy's work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Her papers are held at Syracuse University Grant Arnold introduced her to lithography in 1930 and Gershoy depicted many scenes of Woodstock artists and their daily activities through this medium. From 1942 to 1966 Gershoy lived and painted in San Francisco where she taught at the San Francisco Art Institute. She traveled extensively, filling sketchbooks with scenes of Mexico, France, Spain, Africa and India. During her later years Eugenie Gershoy returned to New York City and concentrated on numerous well received exhibitions. Her last exhibition in at Sid Deutsch Gallery included many of the sculptures that were later exhibited in the Fletcher Gallery. John Russell, former chief critic of fine arts for the New York Times, writes about the 1986 Sid Deutsch exhibition: “As Eugenie Gershoy won the Saint-Gaudens Medal for fine draftsmanship as long ago as 1914 and since 1967 has had 15 papier-mache portrait figures suspended from the ceiling of the lobby of the Hotel Chelsea, she must be ranked as a veteran of the New York scene. Her present exhibition includes not only the high-spirited papier-mache sculptures for which she is best known but a group of small portraits of artists, mostly dating from the 30’s, that is strongly evocative.” Eugenie Gershoy is an artist to take note of for several reasons. She was a woman who received great awards and recognition during a time when most female artists were struggling to hold their own against their male counterparts. As a young girl she won a scholarship to the Arts Student League where she met Hannah Small...

Retaining a fine patina and in overall good condition. Signed with initials SB. I believe the edition size was 7 But I cannot find a mark. Stanley Bleifeld (1924 – 2011) was an American sculptor. Stanley Bleifeld was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Bleifeld earned bachelor of fine arts, bachelor of science in education and in 1949 a master of fine arts degree in painting at Tyler School of Art of Temple University. After a trip to Rome in 1959 or 1960 he gave up painting for sculpture. He began his fine-art career as a painter. However, a visit to Italy and exposure to the bronzes of Donatello, Michelangelo, and Ghiberti changed his direction He worked with the Art Foundry of Massimo del Chiaro and alongside artists such as Lucchesi, Harry Marinsky, Fernando Botero, Igor Mitoraj and Ivan Theimer. Many of his early pieces were religious subjects, and reflected both painting and sculptural techniques in bas reliefs* that had "liquid landscapes in undulating reliefs and free-flowing portraits reminiscent of classical fragments" (166-167). He later turned from these abstract pieces to more realistic figures in bronze. Bleifeld was a National Academician in Sculpture, and a member of the National Academy of Design, and helped set policy for that organization. He was also President of the National Sculpture Society. Past presidents of the society have included John Quincy Adams Ward, James Earle Fraser, Chester Beach, Wheeler Williams, Leo Friedlander, Neil Estern, and Cecil de Blaquiere Howard. The first woman to gain admission into the NSS was Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson, in 1893. She was followed a few years later by Enid Yandell and Bessie Potter Vonnoh in 1898; Janet Scudder in 1904; Anna Hyatt Huntington in 1905 and Evelyn Longman and Abastenia St. Leger Eberle in 1906. In 1946, Richmond Barthé was likely the first African-American to be admitted. In 1994, the NSS held their first exhibition outside the United States at the Palazzo Mediceo Di Seravezza in Italy. Titled “100 Years of the National Sculpture Society of the United States of America in Italy” it ran from the 16th of July through the 4th of September and was curated by Nicky and Stanley Bleifeld along with Costantino Paolicchi, Lodovico Gierut and Paolo Giorgi. Among the 60 notable American sculptors whose work was selected for the exhibition were Stanley Bleifeld, Andrew DeVries, Neil Estern, Leonda Finke, Bruno Lucchesi, Barbara Lekberg...

Retaining a fine patina and in overall good condition. Signed with initials SB. I believe the edition size was 7 But I cannot find a mark. Stanley Bleifeld (1924 – 2011) was an American sculptor. Stanley Bleifeld was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Bleifeld earned bachelor of fine arts, bachelor of science in education and in 1949 a master of fine arts degree in painting at Tyler School of Art of Temple University. After a trip to Rome in 1959 or 1960 he gave up painting for sculpture. He began his fine-art career as a painter. However, a visit to Italy and exposure to the bronzes of Donatello, Michelangelo, and Ghiberti changed his direction He worked with the Art Foundry of Massimo del Chiaro and alongside artists such as Lucchesi, Harry Marinsky, Fernando Botero, Igor Mitoraj and Ivan Theimer. Many of his early pieces were religious subjects, and reflected both painting and sculptural techniques in bas reliefs* that had "liquid landscapes in undulating reliefs and free-flowing portraits reminiscent of classical fragments" (166-167). He later turned from these abstract pieces to more realistic figures in bronze. Bleifeld was a National Academician in Sculpture, and a member of the National Academy of Design, and helped set policy for that organization. He was also President of the National Sculpture Society. Past presidents of the society have included John Quincy Adams Ward, James Earle Fraser, Chester Beach, Wheeler Williams, Leo Friedlander, Neil Estern, and Cecil de Blaquiere Howard. The first woman to gain admission into the NSS was Theo Alice Ruggles Kitson, in 1893. She was followed a few years later by Enid Yandell and Bessie Potter Vonnoh in 1898; Janet Scudder in 1904; Anna Hyatt Huntington in 1905 and Evelyn Longman and Abastenia St. Leger Eberle in 1906. In 1946, Richmond Barthé was likely the first African-American to be admitted. In 1994, the NSS held their first exhibition outside the United States at the Palazzo Mediceo Di Seravezza in Italy. Titled “100 Years of the National Sculpture Society of the United States of America in Italy” it ran from the 16th of July through the 4th of September and was curated by Nicky and Stanley Bleifeld along with Costantino Paolicchi, Lodovico Gierut and Paolo Giorgi. Among the 60 notable American sculptors whose work was selected for the exhibition were Stanley Bleifeld, Andrew DeVries, Neil Estern, Leonda Finke, Bruno Lucchesi, Barbara Lekberg...

Max Kalish (American, 1891-1945) Harmony, c. 1930 Bronze with green marble base Incised signature on right upper side of base 14 x 9 x 5 inches, excluding base 17 x 10 x 8 inches, including base Born in Poland March 1, 1891, figurative sculptor Max Kalish came to the United States in 1894, his family settling in Ohio. A talented youth, Kalish enrolled at the Cleveland Institute of Art as a fifteen-year-old, receiving a first-place award for modeling the figure during studies with Herman Matzen. Kalish went to New York City following graduation, studying with Isidore Konti...

Edris Eckhardt (American, 1905-1998) Vernal Equinox, c. 1975 Bronze Signed on base 16.5 x 4 x 3 inches Born in Cleveland, Ohio January 28, 1905, Edris was given the name Edythe Alin...

Max Kalish (American, 1891-1945) Nude Walking, 1930 Bronze Signed and dated on base 17 x 9 x 4 inches Born in Poland March 1, 1891, figurative sculptor Max Kalish came to the United States in 1894, his family settling in Ohio. A talented youth, Kalish enrolled at the Cleveland Institute of Art as a fifteen-year-old, receiving a first-place award for modeling the figure during studies with Herman Matzen. Kalish went to New York City following graduation, studying with Isidore Konti and Herbert Adams...

The Bride by Janet Scudder (1869-1940) Bronze with dark brown patina signed "Janet Scudder" on the base cast by Alexis Rudier, fondeur Paris (foundry mark) France early 20th century height 28 cm Biography : Janet Scudder (1869-1940) was an American sculptor. Born Netta Deweze Frazee, but called Janet, her childhood was difficult. Her mother died at age 38 in 1874. Despite limited financial means, her father sent her to study drawing at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. She also studied sculpture with Louis Rebisso. She taught in 1888 women wood...