Patrick McElroy

"Organic Form" Signed, Bronze Sculpture with Green Patina

Unknown

Marta Skulme(1890-1962)

Ivars Miķelsons (1962)

Ivars Miķelsons (1962) - I still want to sleep Bronze H 66 cm; W 30 cm; L 40 cm

Ivars Miķelsons (1962)

Ivars Miķelsons (1962)

Ivars Miķelsons (1962)

William King (1925-2015). Reclining figure, ca. 1965. Cast and welded bronze, 7 x 9.5 x 5 inches. Unsigned. William King, a sculptor in a variety of materials whose human figures traced social attitudes through the last half of the 20th century, often poking sly and poignant fun at human follies and foibles, died on March 4 at his home in East Hampton, N.Y. He was 90. His death was confirmed by Scott Chaskey, who is married to Mr. King's stepdaughter, Megan Chaskey. Mr. King worked in clay, wood, bronze, vinyl, burlap and aluminum. He worked both big and small, from busts and toylike figures to large public art pieces depicting familiar human poses -- a seated, cross-legged man reading; a Western couple (he in a cowboy hat, she in a long dress) holding hands; a tall man reaching down to tug along a recalcitrant little boy; a crowd of robotic-looking men walking in lock step. But for all its variation, what unified his work was a wry observer's arched eyebrow, the pointed humor and witty rue of a fatalist. His figurative sculptures, often with long, spidery legs and an outlandishly skewed ratio of torso to appendages, use gestures and posture to suggest attitude and illustrate his own amusement with the unwieldiness of human physical equipment. His subjects included tennis players and gymnasts, dancers and musicians, and he managed to show appreciation of their physical gifts and comic delight at their contortions and costumery. His suit-wearing businessmen often appeared haughty or pompous; his other men could seem timid or perplexed or awkward. Oddly, or perhaps tellingly, he tended to depict women more reverentially, though in his portrayals of couples the fragility and tender comedy inherent in couplehood settled equally on both partners. Mr. King's work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, among other places, and he had dozens of solo gallery shows in New York and elsewhere. But the comic element of his work probably caused his reputation to suffer. Reviews of his exhibitions frequently began with the caveat that even though the work was funny, it was also serious, displaying superior technical skills, imaginative vision and the bolstering weight of a range of influences, from the ancient Etruscans to American folk art to 20th-century artists including Giacometti, Calder. and Elie Nadelman. The critic Hilton Kramer, one of Mr. King's most ardent advocates, wrote in a 1970 essay accompanying a New York gallery exhibit that he was, "among other things, an amusing artist, and nowadays this can, at times, be almost as much a liability as an asset." A "preoccupation with gesture is the focus of King's sculptural imagination," Mr. Kramer wrote. "Everything that one admires in his work - the virtuoso carving, the deft handling of a wide variety of materials, the shrewd observation and resourceful invention - all this is secondary to the concentration on gesture. The physical stance of the human animal as it negotiates the social arena, the unconscious gait that the body assumes in making its way in the social medium, the emotion traced by the course of a limb, a torso, a head, the features of a face, a coiffure or a costume - from a keen observation of these materials King has garnered a large stock of sculptural images notable for their wit, empathy, simplicity and psychological precision." William Dickey King...

Artist Statement: #1 My hands reach, touch, and shape. Hands let go and receive; they try to hold things and to hold things together. Some of my images of hands are derived from M...

Artist Statement: #1 My hands reach, touch, and shape. Hands let go and receive; they try to hold things and to hold things together. Some of my images of hands are derived from M...

A 2023 recipient of the Vermont Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, Leslie Fry is represented in this show with fantastical sculptures of female hands, titled the “Cuffed” series. Tensely poised and mannered gestures, inspired by Parmigianino and Caravaggio, cascade into blooms and barnacles, creating a mesmerizing visual dissonance. This elision of romance and rigidity both draws attention to the limitations of the female form and liberates it from the constraints of reality. Leslie Fry’s works have been exhibited internationally at such venues as Kunsthaus in Hamburg, Zwitscher Machine Gallery in Berlin, Hangaram Art Museum in Seoul, Windspiel Galerie in Vienna, Couvent des Cordeliers in Paris, Artists Space and Wave Hill in New York, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum near Boston, and Centre des Arts Visuels in Montreal. Her public sculptures have been commissioned in New York, South Korea, Montreal, Florida, Wisconsin, and Vermont; public collections include Tufts University, Songchu International Sculpture Park, Freehand New York, Kohler Arts Center, Tampa Museum of Art, Fleming Museum of Art, Musée d’art de Joliette, and St. Petersburg, Florida’s Museum of Fine Arts. Fry’s M.F.A. is from Bard College, and her B.A. is from the University of Vermont, with a Foundation year at the Central School of Art in London. She currently lives and works in Winooski, VT. Artist Statement: #1 My hands reach, touch, and shape. Hands let go and receive; they try to hold things and to hold things together. Some of my images of hands are derived from Mannerist paintings by Parmigianino and Caravaggio, and are ink-washed onto vintage tablecloths...