Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
American, 1927-2009
In the early 1960s, St. Louis Sculptor Ernest Trova—who was entirely self-taught—began developing his pivotal theme of Falling Man, a stark and startling image that combines references to classical sculpture with an industrial aesthetic. In his Profile Canto series, Falling Man—depicted as an androgynous, mechanical figure—is folded and segmented as to be nearly undetectable amid the various geometric forms that comprise these works.to
1
1
2
Overall Width
to
Overall Height
to
3
1
1
2
1
1
1
1
4
4
11
127
101
100
97
4
Artist: Ernest Trova
Flowing Man
By Ernest Trova
Located in Boca Raton, FL
Edition 37/99
Category
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Stainless Steel
Double Walking Figure
By Ernest Trova
Located in Boca Raton, FL
rnest Trova was an artist whose signature creation, a gleaming humanoid known as “Falling Man,” appeared in a series of sculptures and paintings and became a symbol of an imperfect humanity hurtling into the future. Mr. Trova was largely known as a sculptor, but his “Falling Man,” a standard of Pop Art, began life as a painted figure, taking shape on his easel in the early 1960s. Faceless, armless, with a hint of a belly and, its name notwithstanding, of indeterminate sex, the figure struck a variety of poses, sometimes juxtaposed with other like figures, sometimes with mechanical appendages.
In October 1963 his one-man show, “Falling Man Paintings,” was the inaugural exhibition of the Pace Gallery on West 57th Street in Manhattan; it sold out, with the works purchased by the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the architect Philip Johnson and others. In three dimensions, the “Falling Man” figure was made from different materials over the years — nickel and chrome-plated bronze, enamel on aluminum, stainless steel — and often, like the Oscar statuette, was polished to an industrial sheen. It was clearly a space age creation, a forerunner of C3PO, the golden robot in “Star Wars.”
“He found the space age both inspiring and dehumanizing,” Arne Glimcher, who founded the Pace Gallery, now PaceWildenstein, said in an interview on Friday. By the end of the 1960s, “Falling Man” had become Mr. Trova’s trademark, provoking Hilton Kramer, the art critic of The New York Times, to write that Mr. Trova had subjected his favorite figure “to almost as many variations as the Kama Sutra describes for the act of love.”
Ernest Tino Trova Jr. was born in St. Louis on Feb. 19, 1927. Shortly after his high school graduation his father, an industrial tool designer and inventor, died, and young Ernie, as he was known, went to work, most significantly as a window dresser for a department store. His early paintings were in the Abstract Expressionist mode, but his attentiveness to the mannequins had an influence on his art. Through the 1970s and 1980s he continued with “Falling Man,” though he also became interested in formalized, almost mechanical-seeming landscapes, and the figures began to appear, reduced in size, within the context of abstractly rendered gardens.
A self-taught artist with an impish wit and an eccentric turn of mind, Mr. Trova craved the recognition that was available to artists only in New York City, but he never visited for more than a week at a time and made almost no friends among New York artists. He did befriend Ezra Pound. As a fevered fan of Julio Iglesias, he went to the singer’s concerts all over the United States. “Ernie had a fabulous fantasy life,” Richard Solomon, the president of Pace Prints, the publishing arm of PaceWildenstein, said in an interview. “He had a persona he used to hide behind that he called ‘Junior Person.’ He was a wonderful man, but an oddball to beat the band.”
Mr. Trova left the Pace Gallery in the mid-1980s and signed with an inexperienced dealer in St. Louis. His profile went into decline, except in his hometown, where his donation of many of his works helped create the Laumeier Sculpture Park. He continued to work until shortly before his death. Most recently he was making collages using magazine...
Category
20th Century Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Stainless Steel
Double Flapman
By Ernest Trova
Located in Boca Raton, FL
AP 2
Ernest Trova was an artist whose signature creation, a gleaming humanoid known as “Falling Man,” appeared in a series of sculptures and paintings and became a symbol of an imperfect humanity hurtling into the future. Mr. Trova was largely known as a sculptor, but his “Falling Man,” a standard of Pop Art, began life as a painted figure, taking shape on his easel in the early 1960s. Faceless, armless, with a hint of a belly and, its name notwithstanding, of indeterminate sex, the figure struck a variety of poses, sometimes juxtaposed with other like figures, sometimes with mechanical appendages.
In October 1963 his one-man show, “Falling Man Paintings,” was the inaugural exhibition of the Pace Gallery on West 57th Street in Manhattan; it sold out, with the works purchased by the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the architect Philip Johnson and others. In three dimensions, the “Falling Man” figure was made from different materials over the years — nickel and chrome-plated bronze, enamel on aluminum, stainless steel — and often, like the Oscar statuette, was polished to an industrial sheen. It was clearly a space age creation, a forerunner of C3PO, the golden robot in “Star Wars.”
“He found the space age both inspiring and dehumanizing,” Arne Glimcher, who founded the Pace Gallery, now PaceWildenstein, said in an interview on Friday. By the end of the 1960s, “Falling Man” had become Mr. Trova’s trademark, provoking Hilton Kramer, the art critic of The New York Times, to write that Mr. Trova had subjected his favorite figure “to almost as many variations as the Kama Sutra describes for the act of love.”
Ernest Tino Trova Jr. was born in St. Louis on Feb. 19, 1927. Shortly after his high school graduation his father, an industrial tool designer and inventor, died, and young Ernie, as he was known, went to work, most significantly as a window dresser for a department store. His early paintings were in the Abstract Expressionist mode, but his attentiveness to the mannequins had an influence on his art. Through the 1970s and 1980s he continued with “Falling Man,” though he also became interested in formalized, almost mechanical-seeming landscapes, and the figures began to appear, reduced in size, within the context of abstractly rendered gardens.
A self-taught artist with an impish wit and an eccentric turn of mind, Mr. Trova craved the recognition that was available to artists only in New York City, but he never visited for more than a week at a time and made almost no friends among New York artists. He did befriend Ezra Pound. As a fevered fan of Julio Iglesias...
Category
20th Century Contemporary Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Stainless Steel
The Encounter
By Ernest Trova
Located in Missouri, MO
Ernest Trova
"The Encounter" 1994
Chrome Plated Steel
Approx 24 x 26 x 24 inches
Edition 1/8
Known for his Falling Man series in abstract figural sculpture, he created hard-edge ima...
Category
1990s American Modern Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Stainless Steel
Price Upon Request
Related Items
Head IV
By Tom Binger
Located in Kansas City, MO
Tom Binger
"Head IV"
Medium: Mixed Media
Year: 2018, Signed
Size: 14.5 x 10.25 x 2 inches
Tom Binger finds it interesting that during a time in which the internet is quickly becomin...
Category
2010s American Modern Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Metal
1961 Coty Award Plaque Kenneth Hairdresser Jacqueline Onassis Bronze Fashion
Located in New York, NY
1961 Coty Award Plaque Kenneth Hairdresser Jacqueline Onassis Bronze Fashion
Bronze on wood. The wood plaque measures 12 3/4" by 20 3/4 inches. The bronze plaque itself is 13 3/4 x 8 3/4 inches and the the bronze inscription, which reads "COTY, American Fashion Critics Special Award 1961 to KENNETH of LILY DACHE...
Category
1960s American Modern Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Bronze
Bronze Abstract Space Age Book Sculpture LA California Modernist Charna Rickey
By Charna Rickey
Located in Surfside, FL
Charna Rickey 1923 - 2000 Mexican-American Jewish Woman artist.
Signed Bronze House of Books, Architecture Bronze sculpture, signed Charna Rickey and on the front "House of the book." It depicts an open Torah. Original patina.
Approx. dimensions: 7 in. H x 9 in. W x 8.5 in. D. Weight: 13.1 lbs.
Modernist Judaica Sculpture
Born Charna Barsky (Charna Ysabel or Isabel Rickey Barsky) in Chihuahua, Mexico, the future artist lived in Hermosillo and immigrated to Los Angeles when she was 11. She was educated at UCLA and Cal State L.A., she married furniture retailer David Rickey and explored art while raising their three daughters. Moving through phases in terra cotta, bronze, marble and aluminum, she found success later in life. Rickey became one of the original art teachers at Everywoman's Village, a pioneering learning center for women established by three housewives in Van Nuys in 1963. She also taught sculpture at the University of Judaism from 1965 to 1981.
As Rickey became more successful, her sculptures were exhibited in such venues as Artspace Gallery in Woodland Hills and the Courtyard of Century Plaza Towers as part of a 1989 Sculpture Walk produced by the Los Angeles Arts Council. Her sculptures have also found their way into the private collections of such celebrities as Sharon Stone.
Another of Rickey's international creations originally stood at Santa Monica College. In 1985, her 12-foot-high musical sculpture shaped like the Hebrew letter "shin" was moved to the Rubin Academy of Music and Dance at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The free standing architectural Judaic aluminum work has strings that vibrate in the wind to produce sounds. Rickey also created art pieces for the city of Brea. They commissioned some amazing art pieces by Laddie John Dill, Walter Dusenbery, Woods Davy, Rod Kagan, Pol Bury, Niki de Saint Phalle, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Larry Bell, John Okulick...
Category
20th Century American Modern Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Marble, Bronze
$2,200
H 7 in W 9 in D 8.5 in
Hunter, Bronze and Wood Sculpture by James McCain
By James McCain
Located in Long Island City, NY
Artist: James McCain, American (b. 1944)
Title: Hunter
Year: circa 1980
Medium: Bronze Sculpture on Wooden Base, signature and numbering inscribed
Edition: 85/250
Size: 12.5 x 6 x ...
Category
1980s American Modern Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Bronze
$2,250
H 12.5 in W 6 in D 5.5 in
Buffalo, Silver Realist Sculpture by Arnold Goldstein
Located in Long Island City, NY
Silver cast metal sculpture of an American buffalo created by American artist Arnold Goldstein. This artwork has the signature inscribed on the belly.
Category
1970s American Modern Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Metal
$1,500
H 4 in W 6 in D 2 in
Bronze Pine Cone 22-555 - nature inspired, still life, forged bronze sculpture
By Floyd Elzinga
Located in Bloomfield, ON
Canadian sculptor Floyd Elzinga finds inspiration for his iconic imagery in nature. From his studio on the rugged Niagara escarpment, he creates beautiful sculptures using natural forms—trees, the maple leaf and pine cones. This new series of pine cones are superbly detailed, and hand forged from bronze. The polished finish lends an elegance to these tabletop pieces.
“The natural world is fundamentally my inspiration, and it is strongly reflected in my subject matter.” Floyd Elzinga
His pinecone...
Category
2010s Contemporary Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Stainless Steel
$4,500
H 24 in W 15 in D 15 in
Bronze Modernist Sculpture Portrait, Gertrude Stein by Minna Harkavy WPA Artist
Located in Surfside, FL
Minna Rothenberg Harkavy (1895-1987) Estonian-American
signed
bronze portrait bust, marble, stone base.
Minna Harkavy (1887 – 1987) (birth occasionally listed as 1895) was a Jewish ...
Category
Early 20th Century American Modern Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Bronze
$8,500
H 16 in W 7.25 in D 10 in
Nude Walking, Early 20th Century Bronze Sculpture, Cleveland School Artist
By Max Kalish
Located in Beachwood, OH
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...
Category
1930s American Modern Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Bronze
$8,125
H 17 in W 9 in D 4 in
Vintage Arthur Court Aluminum Sculpture Cast Bouquet Flowers, Ladybug Home Decor
Located in Surfside, FL
A designer decor bouquet of aluminum floral forms by Arthur Court Designs (California). Produced 1989. Includes: four (4) aluminum flowers on stems; and...
Category
1980s American Modern Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Metal
Arthur CourtVintage Arthur Court Aluminum Sculpture Cast Bouquet Flowers, Ladybug Home Decor, c.1989
$1,500
H 21 in W 10 in D 3 in
LADY AND SCOTTISH DOG
Located in Pasadena, CA
Magnificent beautiful masterpiece bronze sculpture of lady with the Scottish Deer Hunter dog bronze comes with green patina; 1/10
So beautiful and a lot...
Category
2010s American Modern Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Bronze
Bronze Architectural Model Sculpture Tempio Bretton Architecture Maquette
Located in Surfside, FL
TEMPIO BRETTON: from the catalogue MONUMENTA, 19th International Sculpture Biennale, Antwerp, Belgium.
Tempio Bretton was created in homage to the celebrated English landscapist Capability Brown for the occasion of an exhibition at Bretton Hall in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park , a park in the style of the great master of English garden design. The inclusion in the English garden of a temple ruin, or "eye-catcher," (architectural folly) was used to draw the eye and mind to a focus in time and space, present the beholder with an immediate relationship to an historic past made new within his or her own surroundings, and create a depth of space never before seen in garden design.
I took the idea of the temple ruin eye-catcher and reduced it to a scale at the point where architecture and sculpture merged. Tempio Bretton is not capacious enough to walk into, yet it is considerably larger than a man.
One view of it presents a knot of golden columns clustered together, topped by a dome shape. The only clue from this side to the temple's non-conformity to historic principle is a sharp notch cut into the square base.
Viewed from the opposite side, the cluster of columns capped by an angular top opens up as if to welcome someone in, yet the mysterious core is still impenetrable. These contradictions articulate a confrontation between past and present, and an exciting truth. The past is always at the heart of our constructions in the present.
Walter Dusenbery (born September 21, 1939 in Alameda, California) is an American sculptor. He attended the San Francisco Art Institute, earned an MFA from California College of Arts and Crafts, and then studied in Japan and Italy under Isamu Noguchi. He also held teaching positions at Harvard University and University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Design. From 1971 to 1988, he lived both in Pietrasanta,Italy, and in Little Italy, New York City. Dusenbery's preferred material is stone, particularly travertine or granite. Dusenbery has a particular interest in adding sculpture to public places, such as federal buildings, to humanize the space, but in 1988, he assembled a show of small, entirely hand-carved alabaster sculptures, called "Walter Dusenbery, The Personal Side," at the Fendrick Gallery in Washington, D.C.. In 1977, Dusenbery created Pedogna, on permanent loan from The Metropolitan Museum of Art to Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas at Austin.
That same year, 1988, he was awarded a large commission for the Fulton County Building Atrium in Atlanta, Georgia. The commission was for three fountains and related structures over three stories in height, designed for informal and ceremonial public events, Limestone, marble, granite and travertine fountains, pavilions, seating and meeting areas, performance and concert platforms, staircases and planters for hanging gardens. After completion of the "Atlantacropolis," Dusenbery withdrew from the gallery world and focused his energy on site-specific commissions. (like the landscape works of Maya Lin and Beverly Pepper) Seeking a large-scale stone studio for projects closer to home, he discovered there were none. In 1995, he approached sculptor and patron of sculpture J. Seward Johnson Jr. with the idea of creating a state-of-the-art stone-carving studio, so that American sculptors would not have to travel abroad to realize their work. Johnson agreed to fund such a facility, if Dusenbery would direct it. In 1996, Dusenbery designed the facility for the Stone Division at Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture, and was its first director. The facility was situated in "a building resembling an airplane hangar," The studio offered the ability to digitally scan three-dimensional forms. The Stone Division was a success and attracted a strong group of sculptors: Magdalena Abakanowicz, Lawrence Argent, Barry X Ball...
Category
20th Century American Modern Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Bronze
$4,000
H 12.5 in W 3.5 in D 3.5 in
Alex Katz 'Yvonne' Stainless Steel Multiple with Impressed Signature 2018
By Alex Katz
Located in Miami, FL
ALEX KATZ (1927-Present)
This Alex Katz work 'Yvonne' is a 2018 cutout in powder-coated aluminum, UV archival inks, stainless steel. The signature impressed to the base ‘Alex Katz’....
Category
2010s Contemporary Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Stainless Steel
Previously Available Items
FALLING MAN GOX (SCULPTURE)
By Ernest Trova
Located in Aventura, FL
Bronze and steel sculpture with black patination, on black acrylic base. Etched artist signature with title, date and edition to base underside. Published by Pace Editions. From t...
Category
1970s Pop Art Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Bronze, Steel
Walking Man with Disc
By Ernest Trova
Located in Wilton Manors, FL
Beautiful figural sculpture by American artist, Ernest Tino Trova (1927-2009). Walking Man with Disc (working study), 1966. Brass sheet with cut-out figure in profile, sheet measures...
Category
Mid-20th Century Abstract Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Brass
TRISTAN GOX (SCULPTURE)
By Ernest Trova
Located in Aventura, FL
Steel and bronze sculpture. Inscribed signature and numbered. Artwork is in excellent condition. Certificate of authenticity included. Edition of 125. All reasonable offers will be...
Category
1970s Pop Art Ernest Trova Figurative Sculptures
Materials
Bronze, Steel
Ernest Trova figurative sculptures for sale on 1stDibs.
Find a wide variety of authentic Ernest Trova figurative sculptures available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Ernest Trova in metal, stainless steel, brass and more. Much of the original work by this artist or collective was created during the 20th century and is mostly associated with the contemporary style. Not every interior allows for large Ernest Trova figurative sculptures, so small editions measuring 9 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Anthony Quinn, Norma Minkowitz, and Kathleen Vance. Ernest Trova figurative sculptures prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $1,200 and tops out at $55,000, while the average work can sell for $18,500.