THE EXTRAORDINARY MODERNITY OF JOSEF KALLEYA (1898-1998) (original) (raw)

Mariano Girada: A Maltese Sculptor from Valencia

It was certainly unusual for a Maltese eighteenth-century sculptor not to proceed to Rome for his studies where he could also acquaint himself with the latest trends and works of leading artists. This is the case of Mariano Girada (1771-1823), the leading sculptor of his times and the only known Maltese artist so far to have secure and documented links with the Spanish city of Valencia. This paper seeks to review Girada’s artistic activity within the broader remit of eighteenth-century hispano-maltese connections. It suggests links with Spain, particularly Valencia, through economic activity. This could be the reason why Girada studied in Spain which, by consequence, empowered Girada to introduce a new style and aesthetics to Malta.

Karol Tchorek – an Artist Justly Forgotten?

"Seminar in Place", Muzeum Narodowe w Warszawie: Królikarnia, 2013

Who was Karol Tchorek, the founder of the studio we are in right now? In the correspondence between two of the main characters of Polish modernity, Ryszard Stanisławski and Alina Szapocznikow, he gets a mention as a creator of kitschy sculptures à la nineteenth-century Naturalism. If so, is there a point in paying attention to this figure? His main achievement was a cycle of memorial tablets marking places of executions from the time of the Nazi occupation in Warsaw, which we all know very well; a fairly successful project, admittedly. Another of his widely known sculptures is "Kobieta z dzieckiem" [Woman and Child], adorning the façade of a block of flats in the MDM district in Warsaw;

Centre Five sculptors: the formation of an alternative professional avant-garde

2016

ion and spirituality in art. It is not known what happened to the collection other than that it was lost during or after the war. Laima Jomantas recalled her husband Vincas observing ruefully that, had it not been so, he could have retired on the proceeds of its sale. However, the early exposure to such work and the receptivity to abstract art likely to have been thereby cultivated were arguably of great significance to Jomantas. His uncle’s collection offered a window onto the world of art beyond the confines of Kaunas. Vincas’ father, Vilius Benediktos Jomantas (1891-1960), was a printmaker who designed postage stamps and banknotes for the Lithuanian state as well as political and commercial advertising posters, book jackets and book illustrations. Like Juozas Zikaras, Vilius Jomantas’ life and career reflected the vagaries of Lithuanian history. Although born in the Latvian coastal port of Liepāja, near the border with Lithuania, he was raised in Romny, a small industrial town in...

Discovering an Unknown Sculptor, 30 Years After His Death

Hyperallergic Weekend , 2019

Leo Amino (1911-1989) was a Filipino sculptor on the faculty of Black Mountain College (1948-50). He was in a two-person show with Isamu Noguchi in 1939 and began experimenting with Polyester resin in the 1940s.

Two Russian Sculptors of the Twentieth Century

Russian Review, 2005

Publications on the history of Russian art are rare in these hard times, with publishers suffering from recession wary of the expense of illustrated editions on what they regard as minority interests. Books dedicated to Russian sculpture are particularly few and far between. The appearance of these two volumes, each dedicated to a twentieth-century Russian sculptor, written in an accessible style and extensively illustrated, must therefore be welcomed. This reviewer's pleasure at such a rare double treat is marred somewhat, however, by the fact that both take the form of the "life and work" study of a single artist, a genre which, while it serves the market well, is problematic for scholarship, tending toward uncritical celebration, and even hagiography, rather than analysis. Seemingly, publishers will only undertake to publish on art when a named individual "genius" is placed at the center, thereby making the individual life the explanation of the work. While Marie Lampard et al.'s multiauthored study of Sergei Konenkov succeeds to an important extent in transcending the limitations of this genre, Albert Leong's Centaur: The Life of Ernst Neizvestny demonstrates some of its pitfalls. If monographs are to be written, both Konenkov and Neizvestnyi clearly make fascinating subjects. Apart from any artistic merit they might have, their long and eventful lives brought them into contact, and sometimes confrontation, with major historical events and players. Konenkov's life spanned a century-from the heyday of the Peredvizhniki, Narodniki, and national revival to the Brezhnev era. Both are major figures of Russian twentieth-century sculpture, yet stand somewhat aside from the mainstream of either of the major tendencies of the period, modernism or Socialist Realism. They also make an interesting and potentially fruitful comparison.

Four African American Sculptors a Vision for Today

Sculpture Review, 2011

Proclamation of 1863, African American poet James Weldon Johnson celebrated the anniversary in The New York Times: "Courage! Look out, beyond, and see/ The far horizon's beckoning span!/ Faith in your God-known destiny!" 1 With the end of the Civil War and the reordering of society that followed, a destiny began to unfold that would bring America's nearly 4.5 million black citizens 2 out of bondage and into a different kind of struggle for equality, opportunity, and freedom of expression. New generations of African American artists gained freedom of movement and the resources needed to reach schools, studios, and workshops in Europe and America. Those who arrived in New York during the 1920s found an atmosphere of growing opportunity for patronage and recognition in the great flowering of black art, literature, and music known as the Harlem Renaissance. Sculptor Sargent Johnson was among the artists who achieved prominence in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Harmon Foundation dedicated support to African Americans in the arts and the Federal Art Project provided employment in creating art for public spaces. Considered a West Coast member of the Harlem Renaissance, Sargent Johnson moved to San Francisco in 1915 to pursue his art training. A student of noted sculptors, Ralph Stackpole and Beniamino Bufano, Johnson enjoyed a long and distinguished career, becoming known for his terracotta portrait heads, African masks in metal, bas-relief carvings, and large figures in wood and stone. Johnson's career foreshadowed the richness of possibility for honoring cultural heritage and achieving artistic expression that African American sculptors share in today. Reflecting on the ways in which the past informs the present, sculptor Richard Blake discusses the history of his own artistic development. Beginning his formal art training in 1955 at age nine, he credits delight in the visual world with setting him on his creative path. Drawing was his first love, he says, and his discovery of sculpture at fifteen became a natural next step. "The pleasure I was getting from understanding what I saw visually and graphically-I got that same kind of pleasure from looking at and analyzing form,