Reuben Nakian Figurative Sculptures

W. R. Stevenson's abstract bronze sculpture titled "Bird". The unique sculpture stands on a sleek wooden base and has a plaque that includes the artist and title. Artist Biography: William Robert Stevenson was born in 20 May 1925 in Eugene, Oregon. His family moved to Minneapolis, MN but he promptly returned to Oregon and Washington during the Great Depression to work in the Works Progress Administration (WPA). Hoping to study Art, his future was sidetracked when he was drafted into the United States Army at age 17 years old in early 1942. Being a strong swimmer, and having worked at stables as a child, he initially served in the last US Cavalry Corps, and also as a Swimming Instructor for the United States Army. Upon the abolition of the Cavalry Corps, he was trained as a Gunnar and Tank Commander for the M-4 Sherman Tank under General Patton...

Arman, French American (1928-2005) Gambit (Chess pieces) Cast Bronze Sculpture with patina Incised signature near lower edge, 48/70 with impressed "Bronze Romain & Fils" foundry ma...

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...

The graceful form of a female figure emerges from hand-chiselled black granite in this classically elegant sculpture by Jeremy Guy. The British artist’s contemporary work has long be...

Aharon Bezalel (Afghani-Israeli, 1925-2012) Family Grouping Hand signed in with initials in English Figures fit together like puzzle pieces in solid cast bronze with original patina. Aharon Bezalel (born Afghanistan 1926) Born in Herat, Afghanistan in 1926 and immigrated to Israel at an early age. His father, Reuven Bezalel, was a rabbi and kabbalist. As a youth Aharon studied gold and silver casting as well as applied arts and worked in these fields as a silversmith and judaica craftsman, and was a student of the sculptor Zev Ben-Zvi at the Bezalel Academy for Art & Design where he also studied with Isidor Ascheim and Mordecai Ardon. There he absorbed the basic concepts of classic and modernist art and interpreted, according to them, ideas based on ancient Hebrew sources. He also studied miniature carving with the artists Martin and Helga Rost applying himself at their workshop. Aharon Bezalel worked and resided in Jerusalem, he taught art for many years. His sculptures - works of wood, bronze, aluminum, Plexiglas - were shown at his studio in Ein Kerem. “I saw myself as part of this region. I wanted to find the contact between my art and my surroundings. Those were the first years of Jean Piro’s excavations at the Beer-Sheba mound. They found there, for example, the Canaanite figurines that I especially liked and that were an element that connected me with the past and with this place.” “…a seed and sperm or male and female. These continue life. The singular, the individual alone, cannot exist; I learned this from my father who dabbled with the Kabbalah.” (Aharon Bezalel, excerpt from an interview with David Gerstein) “The singular in Aharon Bezalel’s work is always potentially a couple if not a threesome, the one is also the many: when the individual is revealed within the group he will always seek a huddling, a clinging together. The principle of modular construction is required by this perception of unity and multiplicity, as modular construction in his work is an act of conception or defense. His work bears a similarity to Berrocal as well as affinities to Henry Moore, Lynne Chadwick and Kenneth Armitage. Two poles of unity, potentially alone, exist in A. Bezalel’s world: From a formal, sculptural sense these are the sphere and pillar, metaphorically these are the female in the final stages of pregnancy and the solitary male individual. Sphere-seed-woman; Pillar-strand-man. The disproportional, small heads in A. Bezalel figures leave humankind in it’s primal physical capacity. The woman as a pregnancy or hips, the man as an aggressive or defensive force, the elongated chest serves as a phallus and weapon simultaneously. (Gideon Ofrat) EIN HAROD About the Museum's Holdings: Israeli art is represented by the works of Reuven Rubin, Zaritzky, Nahum Gutman...

Reaching, ca. 1980. Cast bronze. Signed in lower region on wrist. A rare example from the artist's later period influenced by figurative abstraction with expressionist tendencies. James Edward Lewis (August 4, 1923 – August 9, 1997) was an African-American artist, art collector, professor, and curator in the city of Baltimore. He is best known for his role as the leading force for the creation of the James E. Lewis Museum of Art, an institution of the HBCU Morgan State University. His work as the chairman of the Morgan Art Department from 1950 to 1986 allowed for the museum to amass a large collection of more than 3,000 works, predominantly of African and African diasporan art.[1] In addition, he is also well known for his role as an interdisciplinary artist, primarily focused on sculpture, though also having notable examples of lithography and illustration. His artistic style throughout the years has developed from an earlier focus on African-American history and historical figures, for which he is most notable as an artist, to a more contemporary style of African-inspired abstract expressionism. Early and personal life James E. Lewis was born in rural Phenix, Virginia on August 4, 1923 to James T. Lewis and Pearline (Pearlean) Harvey.[5] Lewis' parents were both sharecroppers. Shortly after his birth, his father moved to Baltimore for increased job opportunity; James E. was subsequently raised by his mother until the family was reunited in 1925. They lived for a short time with distant relatives until moving to a four-bedroom house on 1024 North Durham Street in East Baltimore, a predominantly African-American lower-class neighborhood close to Johns Hopkins Hospital. Lewis' primary school, PS 101, was the only public school in East Baltimore that served black children. Lewis grew up in a church-going family, his parents both active members of the Faith Baptist Church, devoting the entirety of their Sundays to church activities. His parents worked a variety of different jobs throughout his youth:[6] his father working as a stevedore for a shipping company, a mechanic, a custodian, a mailroom handler,[6] and an elevator operator.] His mother worked as both a clerk at a drugstore[7] and a laundress for a private family.[4] Lewis' primary exposure to the arts came from Dr. Leon Winslow, a faculty member at PS 101 who Lewis saw as "providing encouragement and art materials to those who wanted and needed it." In fifth grade, Lewis transferred to PS 102. Here, he was able to receive specialized Art Education in Ms. William's class under the guidance of Winslow. He was considered a standout pupil at PS 102 as a result of his introduction to the connection between the arts and the other studies. His time spent in Ms. Pauline Wharton's class allowed for him to experiment with singing, to which he was considered a talented singer. His involvement in this class challenged his earlier belief that singing was not a masculine artistic pursuit. He was able to study both European classics and negro spirituals, which was one of his earliest introductions to arts specific to American black culture. Under Ms. Wharton's direction, he was also involved in many different musical performances,[6] including some works of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Theatre Project.[8] Lewis attended Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, where his love of the arts was heightened through his industrial art class with Lee Davis...

Seane II is an elegant figurative bronze sculpture portraying a couple in love by Nando Kallweit. Modelled on modern youthful postures but with a nod to the importance of heritage t...

This pair of bronze sculptures of Atlas with Globe & Armillary Sphere are of high cast quality. Pairs have sold for over 700,000 Euro. Their condition is excellent for age and has ve...

Frank Arnold is thought by many to be one of the foremost abstract figurative painters and sculptors of our time. He is a living master whose work is considered to be both personal a...

A beautiful modernist 20th Century Bronze piece by Joachim Berthold. Here we find this stylish figure sitting in a hoping position looking up that eludes thought and complexity. A me...

Guitar or Mandolin playing musician. Music themed bronze sculpture Signed and numbered Aronson, David 1923- David Aronson, son of a rabbi, was born in Lithuania in 1923 and immigra...

Felipe Castañeda Mujer Agachada (Crouching Woman), 1972 Bronze, wood base 12 x 9.5 x 11.5 inches Edition III/VI Most recent owners acquired this limited-edition bronze sculpture fro...