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Ruben Nakian Bronze Figurine "Leda and the Swan" Limited Edition

Name: Ruben Nakian Bronze Figurine "Leda and the Swan" Limited Edition
Brand: Reuben Nakian
Price: 3360 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

SALE ONE WEEK ONLY “Leda and the Swan” is by Reuben Nakian (1897 - 1986). He was an American sculptor and teacher of Armenian extraction. His works’ recurring themes are from Greek and Roman mythology. Nakian’s small bronzes achieve majesty and power which are not dependent on size and amplitude. With characteristic freshness, he has reinterpreted the classical subject of Leda and the Swan refining it in the Classical-Renaissance-Baroque tradition in a contemporary way. Dr. Robert P. Metzger gives us his aesthetic interpretation of this work which retells the myth in classical hedonism and freedom of expression showing Leda and the Swann prior to her being ravaged and during their first meeting. “The young virgin is fascinated with her new found friend and accepts him in a spirit of playfulness, contentment and wonder. She is dreamily available and shyly seductive as the deceptively tame swan snuggles up to her with its phallic-like neck.” Leda appears composed, placid yet open and available as compared to her more intense and passionate states in other of Nakian’s depictions on the same theme. This was cast at the "Renaissance Art Foundry" in 1978 and is so marked on the base being #5 of 7. It is believed that “no other sculptor of the twentieth century matched Rueben’s heroic renditions with the grand themes of Western Art. His erotic mythological figures exude a joyous energy of gesture and movement which place them among seminal sculptural achievements of the past one hundred years.” Nakian studied at the Independent School of Art in New York City previously known as the Robert Henri School … with Homer Boss and A. S. Baylinson. Later he attended the Art Students League of New York. He met and befriended Arshile Gorky and William deKooning in the 1930s and Marsden Hartley and Marcel Duchamp in the 1940s. Frank O’Hara, poet, curated a major Reuben Nakian retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1966. The artist had exhibited there in 1930. O’Hara praised Nakian by writing the following for the catalogue: "Nakian is unrepressed, un-neurotic, unabashed in his approach to sensuality, however tortuous his esthetic commitment, and whether his subject be death, bestiality, or Arcadian dalliance. This explicitness gives the "Nymph and Satyr" plaques a marvelous joy and ease, the "Europa" terra-cottas a voluptuous dignity, and the "Leda and the Swan" drawings an almost comic abandon. Unlike most sexually oriented images in modern art, from Auguste Rodin to Andy Warhol, one finds no guilt or masochism in a Nakian. It is outgoing and athletic even in its releases and defeats: the satyr, the bull, the swan, the goat are each circumvented or absorbed by the goddess of his choice in the most choice of circumstances, that of his own choosing, like the amorous "dying" of the Elizabethans or the Metamorphoses of “Ovid.” His work is in the collections of DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Fogg Art Museum, Honolulu Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney in New York, the LACMA in Los Angeles, Nassau County Museum of Art, Neuberger Museum of Art, Oklahoma City Museum of Art, Delaware Art Museum, University of Arizona Museum of Art, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, National Gallery of Australia, Portland Art Museum and the Boca Raton Museum of Art. In addition his work is collected by many colleges, universities and private collections. Nakian taught at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts, the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture

Creator:

Reuben Nakian (Artist)

Dimensions:

Height: 11.5 in (29.21 cm)Width: 14 in (35.56 cm)Depth: 6.5 in (16.51 cm)

Materials and Techniques:

Bronze,Forged,Hand-Crafted

Place of Origin:

United States

Period:

1970-1979

Date of Manufacture:

1978