Prince Monyo Simon Mihailescu-Nasturel

Prince Monyo Fiddler on the Roof Bronze Shtetl Sculpture Rare Judaica

Chaim Gross (American, 1904-1991) Patinated cast bronze sculpture, Three Acrobats, signed mounted on black marble plinth 24.5"h x 14"w x 7"d (bronze alone) Chaim Gross (March 17, 1904 – May 5, 1991) was an American modernist sculptor and educator. Gross was born to a Jewish family in Austrian Galicia, in the village of Wolowa (now known as Mezhgorye, Ukraine), in the Carpathian Mountains. In 1911, his family moved to Kolomyia (which was annexed into the Ukrainian USSR in 1939 and became part of newly independent Ukraine in 1991). When World War I ended, Gross and brother Avrom-Leib went to Budapest to join their older siblings Sarah and Pinkas. Gross applied to and was accepted by the art academy in Budapest and studied under the painter Béla Uitz, though within a year a new regime under Miklos Horthy took over and attempted to expel all Jews and foreigners from the country. After being deported from Hungary, Gross began art studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Vienna, Austria shortly before immigrating to the United States in 1921. Gross's studies continued in the United States at the Beaux-Arts Institute of Design, where he studied with Elie Nadelman and others, and at the Art Students League of New York, with Robert Laurent. He also attended the Educational Alliance Art School, studying under Abbo Ostrowsky, at the same time as Moses Soyer and Peter Blume. In 1926 Gross began teaching at The Educational Alliance, and continued teaching there for the next 50 years. Louise Nevelson was among his students at the Alliance (in 1934), during the time she was transitioning from painting to sculpture. In the late 1920s and early 1930s he exhibited at the Salons of America exhibitions at the Anderson Galleries and, beginning in 1928, at the Whitney Studio Club. In 1929, Gross experimented with printmaking, and created an important group of 15 linocuts and lithographs of landscapes, New York City streets and parks, women in interiors, the circus, and vaudeville. The entire suite is now in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gross returned to the medium of printmaking in the 1960s, and produced approximately 200 works in the medium over the next two decades. For more than sixty years Chaim Gross's art has expressed optimistic, affirming themes, Judaica, balancing acrobats, cyclists, trapeze artists and mothers and children convey joyfulness, modernism, exuberance, love, and intimacy. This aspect of his work remained consistent with his Jewish Hasidic heritage, which teaches that only in his childlike happiness is man nearest to God. In March 1932 Gross had his first solo exhibition at Gallery 144 in New York City. For a short time they represented Gross, as well as his friends Milton Avery, Moses Soyer, Ahron Ben-Shmuel and others. Gross was primarily a practitioner of the direct carving method, with the majority of his work being carved from wood. Other direct carvers in early 20th-century American art include William Zorach, Jose de Creeft, and Robert Laurent. Works by Chaim Gross can be found in major museums and private collections throughout the United States, with substantial holdings (27 sculptures) at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. A key work from this era, now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is the 1932 birds-eye maple Acrobatic Performers, which is also only one and one quarter inch thick. In 1933 Gross joined the government's PWAP (Public Works of Art Project), which transitioned into the WPA (Works Progress Administration), which Gross worked for later in the 1930s. Under these programs Gross taught and demonstrated art, made sculptures that were placed in schools and public colleges, made work for Federal buildings including the Federal Trade Commission Building, and for the France Overseas and Finnish Buildings at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Gross was also recognized during these years with a silver medal at the Exposition universelle de 1937 in Paris, and in 1942, with a purchase prize at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Artists for Victory" exhibition for his wood sculpture of famed circus performer Lillian Leitzel. In 1949 Gross sketched Chaim Weizmann, President of Israel, at several functions in New York City where Weizmann was speaking, Gross completed the bust in bronze later that year. Gross returned to Israel for three months in 1951 (the second of many trips there in the postwar years) to paint a series of 40 watercolors of life in various cities. This series was exhibited at the Jewish Museum (Manhattan) in 1953. In the 1950s Gross began to make more bronze sculptures alongside his wood and stone pieces, and in 1957 and 1959 he traveled to Rome to work with famed bronze foundries including the Nicci foundry. At the end of the decade Gross was working primarily in bronze which allowed him to create open forms, large-scale works and of course, multiple casts. Gross's large-scale bronze The Family, donated to New York City in 1991 in honor of Mayor Ed Koch, and installed at the Bleecker Street Park at 11th street, is now a fixture of Greenwich Village. In 1959, a survey of Gross's sculpture in wood, stone, and bronze was featured in the exhibit Four American Expressionists curated by Lloyd Goodrich at the Whitney Museum of American Art, with work by Abraham Rattner, Doris Caesar, and Karl Knaths. In 1976, a selection from Gross's important collection of historic African sculpture, formed since the late 1930s, was exhibited at the Worcester Art Museum in the show The Sculptor's Eye: The African Art Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Chaim Gross. Gross was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1981. In 1984, he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, with Jacob Lawrence and Lukas Foss. In the fall of 1991, Allen Ginsberg gave an important tribute to Gross at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, which is published in their Proceedings. In 1994, Forum Gallery, which now represents the Chaim Gross estate, held a memorial exhibition featuring a sixty-year survey of Gross's work. Gross was a professor of printmaking and sculpture at both the Educational Alliance and the New School for Social Research in New York City, as well as at the Brooklyn Museum Art School, the MoMA art school, the Art Student's League and the New Art School (which Gross ran briefly with Alexander Dobkin...

Bronze Double Bass Player Klezmer Musician Sculpture signed Mane-Katz at base. Numbered 8/8. -Katz (1894-1962) was a Litvak painter born in Ukraine best known for his depictions of...

Striking bronze organic sculpture by Latin American sculptor Raúl Valdivieso (Chilean, 1931-1993). Valdivieso is known for his reinterpretation of the ...

K.S. Radhakrishnan - Ramp Figure Bronze Sculpture H 12.75 x W 7 x D 6 inches K.S. Radhakrishnan working with Musui & Maiya, Musui potraits has a hand Rickshaw puller as is still prevalent in few parts of Bengal. The bronze figures are elfin, mischievous, airy, acrobatic, and archaic, delicately balancing on one hand or leg. He renders a sensuous quality to his works by deploying extraordinary body movements of his figures. Radhakrishnan is a distinctive and appealing presence on the modern Indian sculpture scene. He says: “For me bronze works best because it is strong, and brings out the character of my sculptures. Although it takes time, the process also becomes a part of my art form.” Style : K.S Radhakrishnan is one of the most notable among the new generation of sculptors. Like many of his contempories he is a figurative sculptor, but his preference for modelling and bronze casting sets him apart from the rest of them. Recharging age old sculptural processes with a new sensibility, thus is the singular challenge he brings to modern Indian sculpture. And this makes him a modernist - who approaches his work with discernible ambition and considerable aplomb while steering clear of brinkmanship. Radhakrishnan's works often drawn from the emotions and myths of the Hindu gods, such as Shiva, Kali and Radha. His sculptures are often larger than life-sized; placed in the outdoors, they evoke a superhuman atmosphere. Over the years, Radhakrishnan has experienced with alternate sculpting mediums, working in molten bronze, beeswax and Plaster of Paris.The physical process of working with the materials becomes a performance in itself. The sculpture is the product of a tactile engagement with his medium. With celebration of sensuality as one of its running themes, his works is at once both intimate and universal in its appeal. A personal commemorative sculpture, with a scale and presence that holds well in natural settings, his work has found permanent home in a number of public collections all over the world. About the Artist and his work : Born : Born 1956, Kerala. Education : 1979 : B.F.A. in Sculpture, Viswa Bharati University, Santiniketan, West Bengal 1981 : M.F.A. in Sculpture, Viswa Bharati University, Santiniketan, West Bengal. Solo exhibitions : 2006 : ’Freehold’ at Museum Gallery, Mumbai ‘Freehold’ at Artalive Gallery, New Delhi 2005 : ’The Ramp’ at Tao Art Gallery, Mumbai ‘Unbearable Lightness of being’ at India International Centre, New Delhi 2004 : ’The Ramp’ at Sridharani Art Gallery, New Delhi ‘The Ramp’ at Bayer ABS Limited Gallery, Vadodara 2000 : ’Musui Maiya’ sponsored by Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi 1998 : ’Song of the Road’ – sponsored by International Travel House, ITC, New Delhi ‘Portal’ – Apeejay Lawns, Calcutta, sponsored by Apeejay Surendra, Group, Calcutta 1993 : Centre des Bonds de Marne, LePerreux-Bry sur-Marne, Paris, France. 1987 : Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai. Participated Exhibitions : 2007 : ’Darpan’ an exhibition sponsored by Nvya Gallery, New Delhi Travel to Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia – sponsored by Nvya Gallery. 2006 : Travel to U.S.A, sponsored by Arts India, New York Travel to Russia, sponsored by Art Resource Trust, Mumbai Travel to Morocco, sponsored by Popular Prakashan, Mumbai. 2005 : Travel to Istanbul, Turkey to attend artists workshop Travel to China (Silk Route) sponsored by Uttarayan, Baroda Travel to South Africa organised by Gallery Navya, New Delhi. 2003 : Travel to Cairo and other cities in Egypt to attend an artists workshop Travel to France and Italy sponsored by TMI Foundation France Exhibition titled ‘Can’ curated by Johny M.L Exhibition ‘Only connect’ at India Habitat Centre, New Delhi Exhibition ‘Nayika’ by Ganesha Art...