Boris Lovet-Lorski Sculptures

American, 1894-1973

Boris Lovet-Lorski, sculptor, lithographer and painter, who contributed significantly to the American Art Deco movement, was born in Lithuania in 1894. Trained as an architect at the Royal Academy in Petrograd, throughout his career, Lovet-Lorski was acutely sensitive to volume and structural space. He also incorporated architectural backgrounds in the flattened aesthetic of his Art Deco neoclassicism, hallmarks of his elegant in a distinctly original style. Lovet-Lorski's idealized subject matter and masterful designs quickly won the young sculptor critical acclaim and led to his first one-man show in Boston in 1925, the year he became an American citizen. He was then invited to teach at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, quickly developing a reputation that catapulted him into the New York artistic milieu. He exhibited on a regular basis with the Wildenstein Gallery from 1928 onward. Lovet-Lorski was a quintessentially Art Deco artist. His unique style was an amalgam of Modern, Tribal, Oriental, Archaic and Teutonic influences. His Slavic roots and eclecticism tempered his modernism with lyricism and a sense of mystery. His sculptures, in bronze or Black Belgian Marble, are sleek and gorgeously polished. The work from the 1920s and 1930s often featured exotic, allegorical nudes, stylized horses or busts. Lovet-Lorski was particularly noted for his female nudes with narrow hips, thoracic cages that broaden as they rise from waist to shoulder and wide-spread arms, with hands clasped and held behind or above classically modeled heads that were perched on their torsos like flowers on a stem. Lovet-Lorski's idealized vision coincided perfectly with the mechanization of the era, its gleaming, streamlined airplanes, automobiles and proud skyscrapers, that were the sacramentals of the inter-war period. He regularly worked in sumptuous and precious materials, onyx, jade and rare, fossilized wood essences, such as that taken from a 600-year old, Assyrian lemon tree. He tailored the subjects of his sculptures to suit the nature of his materials. The Belgian black marble of Head of a Woman is a dense and close-grained stone that complements the idealized features of the figure. God Unknown, one of the sculptor's best-known works was carved in pure white Carrara marble. His preferred exteriors were like polished silk,” adding to the serenity and timelessness that his sculptures convey. Lovet-Lorski’s style and the allure of his materials brought him commissions for portraits of high society and celebrated figures. By 1929, he was successful enough to maintain studios in New York, Rome and Paris. Wildenstein Gallery gave him a retrospective exhibit in 1940. His recognition was international and his sculptures were acquired by the permanent collections of over 20 major museums. The sculptor received the French Legion of Honor in 1950. He was a member of the National Academy of Design, the National Sculpture Society, the Society of Independent Artists and the Salons of Paris. His last major work was the Manila War Memorial. He attempted to complete the monument in 1957, but arthritis had crippled him to the point that he could no longer sculpt. He finished his career as a painter and his works continued to enjoy considerable success. Lovet-Lorski's works are held in the collections of the Musée de Luxembourg, Paris; the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; the Petit Palais, Paris; the British Museum, London; and many museums and galleries in the United States: the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Los Angeles Museum of Art; the Seattle Art Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts. As an interesting footnote: in his youth, he had considerable success with the feminine sex that was so eloquently extolled in his art.

Artist: Boris Lovet-Lorski

Boris Lovet-Lorski Limestone Art Deco Head, circa 1930

By Boris Lovet-Lorski

Located in New York, NY

White stone head in the art deco style. Born in Lithuania at the end of the nineteenth century, Boris Lovet-Lorski studied art at the Imperial Academy of Art in St. Petersburg before working briefly as an architect. He immigrated to New York in 1920 and became an American citizen five years later. His sculptures epitomize the ideals of the Art Deco decades: comprised of sleek lines and smooth surfaces, the streamlined compositions reflect the new technological forms of the machine age. Despite their modernist treatment, Lovet-Lorski’s elegant, stylized figures reference both ancient and classical sources and are characterized by a universal and serene sensibility. Concentrating on figural busts, familial groups, and standing female nudes as his subject matter, the artist rendered them in a variety of media. The materials range from the traditional bronze and marble to exotic woods and unusual stones; each is carefully selected so that its surface texture and color contribute to the emotive aura of the work. Carved out of a block of limestone, Untitled (Head) depicts a female visage nearly androgynous in its idealization. The delicate features of her face, the long, straight nose, thin pursed lips and high cheekbones, are made even more diminutive by the massive bulk of the stone that serves as their backdrop. The prominent widow’s peak of her hairline and the strong arch of her brow, two of Lovet-Lorski’s most distinctive characteristics, are elongated to accentuate the linear rhythms of the composition. The layers of her hair are delineated by stepped striations reminiscent of archaic precedents, which meld into structural columns and connect the form architecturally to the stone’s mass. Unlike the majority of Lovet-Lorski’s sculptures, in which the heads of the figures are tilted to the side or downward to convey a pensive mood, the woman in Untitled (Head) looks straight ahead. Her frontal positioning gives the composition a nearly perfect symmetry, in turn endowing the work with a still, eternal sensibility. The notched surface of the surrounding limestone stands in sharp contrast to the smoothness of her skin. In the twenties, the artist tended to finish his sculptures to a highly polished degree of refinement, but in the thirties he began to experiment with contrasts of texture and the aesthetic of the fragment. In this respect, the work is vaguely evocative of Egyptian funerary sculptures, in which the figures were carved with an eye for three-dimensionality but were left intact in a larger piece of stone to give them physical durability and permanence. Embodying classical ideals of stoicism and universal beauty, the sculpture ultimately exudes a surface allure that is difficult to resist. A similar example of this approach can be seen in the 1937 sculpture Diana, which resides in the permanent collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. Carved from a piece of black Belgian marble, the work is a stylized bust of the Greek goddess Diana...

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1930s Boris Lovet-Lorski Sculptures

Materials

Limestone

Located in Rome, IT

Designed as entrance guardians, this pair of mythical lady sphinx statuary display the head and chest of a neoclassical woman and the body of a recumbent lion on a rectangular stone ...

Category

2010s Baroque Boris Lovet-Lorski Sculptures

Materials

Limestone

Pair of Exceptional Italian Sphinx Limestone Statues, 2022

H 57.09 in W 59.06 in D 31.5 in

First Bite, female figure holding apple, garden of eden, bronze sculpture Williams

By Troy Williams

Located in Santa Fe, NM

First Bite,female figure holding apple,garden of eden,bronze sculpture Williams First Bite, female figure holding apple, garden of eden, bronze sculpture Expressing Situations and Beings in Human Form Sculptor Troy Williams unites the timeless and the contemporary in sculptures of rare beauty and meaning Beyond all the narrative potential of the three obvious physical dimensions of Troy Williams’ sculpture there are many other considerations that contribute greatly to the enjoyment, appreciation, and understanding of his entrancing 360-degree works of figurative art. Among these are the emotional responses and intellectual interpretations that first go into the artist’s creative process and then into every subsequent spectator’s viewings at least somewhat differently each time. Some artists insist on leaving these entirely up to each viewer, but Williams is glad to enrich the experience by inviting the viewer in for a little insight into the artist’s intention. Certain ambiguities and unintended provocations might otherwise arise, as Williams uses original combinations of materials or ideas in highly original ways. For the sophisticated clientele of Glenn Green Galleries Williams specializes in figurative and facial sculptures hewn from fallen woods he finds while running near his home in the mountains of north central New Mexico. Williams has in the past worked with exotic woods, but now avoids them in a desire to protect the people, plants, and animals that depend on a vibrant, healthy, and unexploited local ecosystems. Finding dead and downed wood also introduces an element of serendipitous chance into the sculptor’s process of selection and inspiration. Nature provides an exquisite mass of workable solids, surfaces, patterns, and curves in cottonwood and the many varieties of juniper this sculptor favors. Troy Williams simply rescues these from the elements and then elevates them to timeless treasures by relating them to themes that express our deepest nature. Awake to the most beautiful twists, turns, and striations already present in these found mediums, Williams is naturally and passionately drawn to every stage of freeing the underlying sculpture. Following the wood’s ingrained tendencies is always a creative guide for Williams. Growing up in an Indiana farming community, his dad a family practice doctor and his mother an artist, Troy has always felt an affinity for the earth and especially its mountains. He initially came west to study agriculture at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, attracted there by a setting where his athletic nature could find full expression. His interest in an agriculture career gave way to his love of the mountains. In order to continue living in them and enjoy the hiking, climbing, and running he also loved, Troy worked for several years in a solar business, progressing from manufacturing to installations to design. On a fortuitous errand for a cousin back home, Troy happened into silversmithing and began producing simple, hammered ear cuffs. At this point the artistic nature that he had earlier suppressed in favor of athletics began to emerge strongly, and he expanded into more complex designs as he learned and mastered goldsmithing and lapidary. Another quantum leap occurred when he made his first copper face for a pendant. He couldn’t wait to see the face on a larger scale and was eager for the challenge of learning another art. He began sculpting metal, then stone, then came upon wood as his medium of choice. Wood had immediate allure: scented, expanding, contracting, and seeming to breathe. Williams was seduced by its warmth, the play of light on the complexion of its grain, and the inherent life force so evident in wood. He also learned to coax creative advantage from some of wood’s pitfalls, like soft spots, tricky grains composed of woody xylem and softer phloem; and to avoid the conditions that make it splinter. A quality of segmentation or fragmentation characterizes Williams’s sculptures and provides great visual satisfaction along with intriguing thematic provocation. One is struck by the beautiful outlines that might never be apparent had Williams not removed segments or created interior voids expressly to reveal them. When sculpting a face, Williams focuses on aspects that are mask-like, floating, and alive with contours that might not be visible were the artist to sculpt the full head. The segmentation in his exquisitely refined female figurative works incorporates solids, hollows, and curvilinear elements for reasons that are at once artistic, philosophical, and experiential. Besides attending basic college art classes, to understand more fully the human figure, Troy spent a summer in Europe...

Category

Early 2000s Contemporary Boris Lovet-Lorski Sculptures

Materials

Limestone, Bronze

Troy Williams
First Bite, female figure holding apple, garden of eden, bronze sculpture Williams

H 24.5 in W 5 in D 6.5 in

Italian Limestone Garden Sculptures of Aria a Roman Goddness

Located in Rome, IT

Finely carved mythological subject in Lecce limestone of Aria a Roman Goddness . Excellent condition from an estate of Veneto. Measurements: Statue cm 160, base cm 85.

Category

20th Century Academic Boris Lovet-Lorski Sculptures

Materials

Limestone

Italian Limestone Garden Sculptures of Aria a Roman Goddness , 1960

H 96.46 in Dm 25.6 in

H 118.12 in W 27.56 in D 24.81 in

Previously Available Items

Art Deco Sculpture Flapper Womans Head Xenozane Marble Stone

By Boris Lovet-Lorski

Located in Surfside, FL

This is a portrait sculpture bust of a flapper woman. The sitter was Frances Widney, (Mrs. Robert Gump of the San Francisco family who owned Gump's Department stores). This auction i...

Category

1920s Art Deco Boris Lovet-Lorski Sculptures

Boris Lovet-Lorski
Art Deco Sculpture Flapper Womans Head Xenozane Marble Stone, c.1930

H 13 in

Boris Lovet-lorski sculptures for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Boris Lovet-Lorski sculptures available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Boris Lovet-Lorski in limestone, stone and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the Art Deco style. Not every interior allows for large Boris Lovet-Lorski sculptures, so small editions measuring 8 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Jean Cocteau, Erté, and Curtis Jeré. Boris Lovet-Lorski sculptures prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $24,000 and tops out at $60,000, while the average work can sell for $42,000.