William King (b.1925) Art
American, 1925-2015
American artist William King was best known for his comedic sculptures — working in clay and a range of metals, he created a wide variety of toy-like figures over the years that were cartoonish in their contorted forms and unlikely poses. King emphasized posture and body language in his art and poked fun at societal conventions as well as how we navigate the trials of our daily lives in a cheerful, clever manner.
Born in Jacksonville, Florida, King grew up in Coconut Grove, a historic Miami neighborhood. He studied at the University of Florida and later moved to New York City, finishing his studies at the Cooper Union in the late 1940s. King subsequently traveled to Rome on a Fulbright scholarship and explored the arts of Europe, including in London and Athens. In 1953, after returning to the United States, he began teaching at the Brooklyn Museum Art School.
In 1954, King had his first solo show at Alan Gallery in New York and continued to exhibit in and around the city until 2014. He worked across a wide variety of media, most frequently metal, such as bronze, aluminum and steel of varying finishes. His more serious pieces saw an integration of darker materials with rougher textures to amplify his figures' reflective, dismayed or generally somber expressions.
King received numerous awards for his work, including acknowledgments from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts and the San Francisco Arts Commission, as well as an honorary doctorate from the San Francisco Art Institute.
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Artist: William King (b.1925)
The Test, Assembled Kinetic Modernist Sculpture Puzzle Construction
By William King (b.1925)
Located in Surfside, FL
"The Test," 1970
Aluminum sculpture in 5 parts.
Artist's cipher and AP stamped into male figure, front,
20 5/16" x 12 1/2" x 6 5/7" (approx.)
American sculptor King is most noted for his long-limbed figurative public art sculptures depicting people engaged in everyday activities such as reading or conversing. He created his busts and figures in a variety of materials, including clay, wood, metal, and textiles. William Dickey King was born in Jacksonville, Florida. As a boy, William made model airplanes and helped his father and older brother build furniture and boats.
He came to New York, where he attended the Cooper Union and began selling his early sculptures even before he graduated. He later studied with the sculptor Milton Hebald and traveled to Italy on a Fulbright grant.
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. Mr. King’s work often reflected the times, taking on fashions and occasional politics. In the 1960s and 1970s, his work featuring African-American figures (including the activist Angela Davis, with hands cuffed behind her back) evoked his interest in civil rights.
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.
His first solo exhibit took place in 1954 at the Alan Gallery in New York City. King was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2003, and in 2007 the International Sculpture Center honored him with the Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award. Mr. King’s work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Hirshorn Museum at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, among other places, and he had dozens of solo gallery shows in New York and elsewhere.
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 New York Times critic Holland Cotter once described Mr. King’s sculpture as “comical-tragical-maniacal,” and “like Giacomettis conceived by John Cheever.”
Category
1970s American Modern William King (b.1925) Art
Materials
Metal
Reclining Figure (woman)
By William King (b.1925)
Located in Wilton Manors, FL
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...
Category
Mid-20th Century Abstract William King (b.1925) Art
Materials
Bronze
Vintage Lithograph Poster William King Terry Dintenfass Gallery NYC
By William King (b.1925)
Located in Surfside, FL
Sculptor William King is widely renowned for his signature flattened and stilt-legged figures, gesturing dramatically. Humorous and rife with social commentary, his work first offered an alternative to Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s, then to Minimalism and conceptual art in the 1960s and 1970s. Through one radical art historical shift after another, King has maintained his commitment to the figure and social realism. Working with aluminum and vinyl, he arranges his painted figures in configurations that transform various social activities into satirical or fantastic situations. A man in a business suit with hands in his pockets is a recurring figure throughout his work.
King was born in Jacksonville, Florida, in 1925, and grew up in Coconut Grove, Miami. After attending the University of Florida between 1942 and 1944, he came to New York in 1945, enrolling that year at Cooper Union and graduating in 1948. The following year he went to Rome on a Fulbright scholarship. Beginning in 1953, he taught for three years at the Brooklyn Museum Art School. He has also taught at the University of California, Berkeley, and elsewhere. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was President of the National Academy of Design between 1994 and 1998. He is the father of Eli King and Amy King, and lives with his wife, Connie Fox, in East Hampton, New York. King’s earliest one-person shows were with the Alan Gallery, New York, beginning in 1954. The majority of his subsequent New York exhibitions were with the Terry Dintenfass Gallery. Of note in the writings about the artist are reviews by Fairfield Porter, in 1954 (in Art News) and 1960 (in The Nation), and numerous essays and reviews by Hilton Kramer. The fullest biographical account of the artist is by Gerald Nordland, in a 1994 gallery exhibition catalog entitled William King: Forty Years of Work in Wood. Previous awards include the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist Grant, San Francisco Arts Commission Award for Outstanding Achievement in Sculpture, Honorary Doctorate for Outstanding Achievement in Sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute, Honorary Doctorate from the California College of Arts and Crafts, and Honorary Doctorate from the Corcoran School of Art, Washington, D.C.
EDUCATION
University of Florida, 1942 – 1944
Cooper Union Art School, New York, 1945 – 1948
Brooklyn Museum Art School, New York, 1949
Academia dei Belle Arti, Rome, 1949 – 1950
Central School, London, England, 1952
AWARDS
Sculpture Prize, Cooper Union Art School, New York, 1948
Fulbright Grant, 1949 – 1950
Margaret Tiffany Blake Fresco Award, 1951
Augustus St. Gaudens Medal, Cooper Union, New York, 1964
Creative Artists Public Service Award and Grant, 1974
Hakone Open-Air Museum, Japan, Distinction Prize, 1980
National Academy of Design, New York, Gold Medal, 1986
American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, Louise Nevelson Award, 1995
Guild Hall of East Hampton, Lifetime Achievement in the Arts, Visual Arts Award, 1997
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
Alan Gallery, New York, 1954, 1955, 1961
San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, California, 1970
Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California, 1970
Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1971
Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1971
Ringling Museum, Sarasota, Florida, 1971
Dag Hammerskjold Plaza, New York, 1971
Alpha Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts, 1971, 1982
Montgomery Museum of Art, Montgomery, Alabama, 1972, 1987
Jacksonville Art Museum, Jacksonville, Florida, 1972
Hopkins Art Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, 1972
Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1972
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut, 1972
Tennessee Fine Arts Center, Nashville, Tennessee, 1972
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1972
Elvehjem Art Center, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, 1973
University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia, 1973
William Benton Museum, University of Connecticut, 1973
State Universities of New York (traveling exhibitions), 1974
Benson Gallery, Bridgehampton, New York, 1976
Zabriskie Gallery, New York, 1977
Louise Himmelfarb Gallery, Water Mill New York, 1980
Wingspread Gallery, Northeast Harbor, Maine, 1981
Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, California, 1985, 1987
Hooks-Epstein Gallery, Houston, Texas, 1986
Hunter Museum, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1987
David Heath...
Category
Late 20th Century American Modern William King (b.1925) Art
Materials
Lithograph
Untitled
By William King (b.1925)
Located in Boca Raton, FL
Vinyl and Aluminum
Sculptor William King is widely renowned for his signature flattened and stilt-legged figures, gesturing dramatically. Humorous and rife with social commentary, h...
Category
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary William King (b.1925) Art
Materials
Mixed Media
I'm Trying
By William King (b.1925)
Located in Boca Raton, FL
Vinyl and Aluminum
Sculptor William King is widely renowned for his signature flattened and stilt-legged figures, gesturing dramatically. Humorous and rife with social commentary, h...
Category
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary William King (b.1925) Art
Materials
Mixed Media
Take It or Leave It
By William King (b.1925)
Located in Boca Raton, FL
Take It Or leave It is a life size sculpture constructed of mylar over an aluminum frame.
Sculptor William King is widely renowned for his signature flattened and stilt-legged figu...
Category
20th Century Contemporary William King (b.1925) Art
Materials
Mylar, Mixed Media
Triumph
By William King (b.1925)
Located in Boca Raton, FL
This sculpture is from the artists "Men of Attitude" series.
After graduating from the University of Philadelphia with an engineering degree, Grossman soon discovered his passion fo...
Category
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary William King (b.1925) Art
Materials
Mixed Media
Onward
By William King (b.1925)
Located in Boca Raton, FL
Vinyl and Aluminum
Sculptor William King is widely renowned for his signature flattened and stilt-legged figures, gesturing dramatically. Humorous and rife with social commentary, h...
Category
21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary William King (b.1925) Art
Materials
Mixed Media
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William King (b.1925) art for sale on 1stDibs.
Find a wide variety of authentic William King (b.1925) art available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by William King (b.1925) in mixed media, metal, bronze 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 William King (b.1925) art, so small editions measuring 10 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Norma Minkowitz, Matt Gil, and Robert Holmes. William King (b.1925) art prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $450 and tops out at $48,000, while the average work can sell for $21,000.