David Nash: Sculpture 1990

A hand-carved fir wood torso sculpture mounted on a solid stone base by American artist, William Sildar. Smoothly contoured with a rich, warm finish. T...

Vintage paperback book. By The Danish Society of Arts and Crafts and Industrial Design, published in 1960. First edition, 120 pages. This early survey of mid-century Danish design c...

Paperback book featuring artist, Barnett Newman. Published by The Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2002, with essays by renowned art critics and historians. This comprehensive edition w...

Vintage, handmade abstract metal sculpture on a wooden base.

In this late work by Dal Fabbro, the viewer is reminded of a lone cactus in the desert. But closer inspection reveals expertly carved gaps in the wood, showing us the depths and dive...

Yongjin Han was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1934. After the Korean War—in which he fought, lying about his age in order to enlist—he was one of six students admitted to the sculpture program at the Seoul National University. At the time of his enrollment little of his native city remained intact; nonetheless, he had never felt more responsible to his work, firm in the conviction that artistic expression is every bit as essential to life and human nature as eating, drinking, or breathing. One of Han’s teachers was Kim Chong Yung, a pioneer of Korean abstract sculpture, and by the time of his graduation he had adopted the abstraction that had seized both Europe and the United States several years before. . In 1967 he relocated to the USA, where he studied at Dartmouth and Columbia. Over the course of his long career the artist returned to Korea with frequency and made extended stays in Japan and Europe. Trips to Korea signified something more than mere homesickness: Han’s work, though made largely in America, remained grounded in his rich cultural heritage. Korea rests on a bedrock of granite, and freestanding sculpture produced of the stone has for centuries demarcated sites of historical and religious significance. Han’s sculpture bridges this past with modernity. Richard A. Born, former Curator at the Smart Museum at the University of Chicago, has said that Han “brought Korea’s tradition of direct stone carving out of figuration into a refined, non-objective abstraction.” For his part, Han put very little stock in designations; his focus, instead, was on the stone itself. His pieces explore a certain harmonization with nature. Han, when describing his work, said, "As stone has been around since the beginning of time, it has much to teach us if we care to slow down and listen." He believed that each stone has its own history, character, and energy and that his task was to draw out these inherently spiritual qualities. He described his process as a “dialogue” with his material: "The stone tells me it has an itch in a certain spot, so I scratch it—and we both feel better!" Han worked alone and with manual tools, and the process is arduous. Carving stone this way takes time, and, what’s more, required great force—yet Han’s sculptures, even the monumental ones, are, as friend and fellow artist David Parker...

Typical of the sculptural output of dal Fabbro, the lines of this piece shift rhythmically depending on the viewer's position. The artist plays with the relationship between space an...

One of the more figural of dal Fabbro's oeuvre, this sculpture conjures images of a bird perched on a branch, ready to take flight. In the artist's classic style, however, the carvin...