A sculptor from the San Francisco Bay area, Bruce Beasley worked abstractly, his early works attenuated forms utilizing bronze castings of found objects, particularly machine parts. The dynamism of his pieces resulted from tensions created between an elegant linear form and the rude objects of which the form was constructed. Grongormain is a typical work from this period. In the 1970s the artist abandoned metal for acrylic, casting clear forms initially influenced by the San Francisco doyenne of acrylic sculpture, Freda Koblick.
‍Title Grongormain
‍Scale Height 6”
‍Medium Bronze relief
‍Location Inside Wingspread

Title Untitled (vintage grape cluster motif, circa 1890 - 1900)
‍Scale Length 12”
‍Medium Soapstone
‍Location Inside Wingspread

Although G. Alan Wright matured as a sculptor in the Puget Sound area of Washington state, he has seemingly not been influenced by the Oriental mysticism which has concerned many Northwest artists. Wright early confined his subject matter to animals and birds, and spent his career refining his interpretations. Two for the Show is typical, the frog honed of irregularities, polished until it stands more as archetype than individual.
‍Title Two for the Show
‍Scale Length 10”
‍Medium Cast bronze
‍Location Inside Wingspread

Nathan Cabot Hale is considered a master of the welded bronze technique – particularly involving oxy-acetylene welding – which he perfected while working on a ship repair crew in the late 1940s. The California-born artist finished his art training in New York as a painter, but soon turned to sculpture, utilizing his shipyard experience as a fine art tool. Initially his approach was abstract, but within ten years he had bucked the domineering tide of abstract expressionism and returned to natural forms, particularly human and animal figures.
‍Title Saltimbanque
‍Scale Height 20”
‍Medium Manganese bronze
‍Location Inside Wingspread

In the mid-1960s Milton Hebald was commissioned by Lee Nordness, the New York art dealer, to create a life-sized portrait sculpture of James Joyce for the writer’s unmarked grave. When the portrait was unveiled, the American critic, Frank Getlein, labeled it “the most completely successful memorial full-figure portrait in the mid-twentieth century.” Hebald, an admirer of Joyce’s works, continued with a series of portrait sculptures of the writer and of his characters, particularly those in Ulysses. One of this group is Proteus (The Young Joyce Walking), Joyce as the mythical figure capable of changing shapes, a gift required by all writers who create fictional figures who live.
‍Title Proteus (The Young Joyce Walking) (1966)
‍Scale Height 20”
‍Medium Cast bronze
‍Location Inside Wingspread

Doris Caesar was forced to move slowly into sculpture, a field not particularly welcoming to women in the 1920s. She traveled abroad, observing the work of European masters, and was able to study in the U.S. After a debut exhibition at a smaller New York gallery, Caesar was invited to join the Curt Valentin gallery, respected for its strong sculpture roster. In the 1950s her subject matter narrowed almost exclusively to women – elongated, sinewy, and invariably small headed women, women well known to other women of the 1950s, women attempting to rise to a new authority, stretching out of secondary citizenship into an equal position with men in the arts and in the home. One critic claimed she “probed into the heart of a woman’s experience.”
‍Title Reaching Woman
‍Scale Height 25”
‍Medium Cast bronze on black marble base
‍Location Inside Wingspread

Now one of the most respected stone carvers of his century, Jose De Creeft studied in Madrid and Paris, where Picasso and Gris were close companions. In 1929 he emigrated to the U.S., joining a school of naturalistic sculptors – Laurent, Zorach, Flannagan. A De Creeft trademark – utilized in the work at Wingspread – is leaving part of the stone untouched, contrasting the rough surface with highly polished carved areas, thereby reminding the observer of art’s humble beginnings.
‍Title Le Pensée (1961)
‍Scale Height 18”
‍Medium Marble
‍Location Inside Wingspread

Title Untitled
‍Scale Height 12”
‍Medium Stone
‍Location Inside Wingspread

Title Untitled (goblin, nude in tumbling position)
‍Scale Height 10”
‍Medium Bronze
‍Location Inside Wingspread

Title Prey (stylized eagle)
‍Scale Height 20”
‍Medium Bronze
‍Location Inside Wingspread

William Dickey King was one of the free souls of contemporary American sculpture. His works, usually figurative, were created in all sizes – from miniature wire structures to fifteen-foot-high metal cutouts – and in a wide variety of media – wood, bronze, copper, aluminum, and more. A style that in the hands of a lesser artist might reach only cartoon depth manages with King to probe unpretentiously the range of human frailties – all through an unfailing eye for relevant postures. If the work is not kept unpretentious by posture this effect is accomplished by treatment, such as welding body parts with obvious seams. Solder can take the romance out of romanticism – out of all “isms.” Mother is a less typical work, more conventional in approach, one of a series of his wife with child. Even with this easily sentimentalized subject, the artist keeps the expression fresh and unpretentious.
‍Title Mother
‍Scale Height 18”
‍Medium Bronze on marble base
‍Location Inside Wingspread

Title Untitled (ceramic vessel with twisted neck)
‍Scale Height 12”
‍Medium Ceramic
‍Location Inside Wingspread

Title Untitled (painted repoussé scale type body with dragon banding)
‍Scale Height 12”
‍Medium Large Japanese gong with paddle, on oriental stand pot
‍Location Inside Wingspread

Title Don Quixote
‍Scale Height 38”
‍Medium Bronzed finish metal
‍Location Inside Wingspread