Richard Pitts Sculptures

Colorful abstract ceramic sculpture titled "Mini" by Lauren Skelly Bailey. Glazed stoneware, gold luster. Size: 7 x 5 x 5.5 inches. Artist Lauren Skelly Bailey invites viewers to d...

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...

Inspired by dance and weightlessness, Granville Beals' industrial metal sculptures are primarily about relationships. Concerned with form and abstraction, he does not merely manipula...

Colorful blue abstract ceramic sculpture titled "Froth Crinkle" by Lauren Skelly Bailey. Glazed stoneware, gold luster. Size: 10 x 6 x 5.5 inches. Artist Lauren Skelly Bailey invit...

Artist: Kuno Vollet Title: High Schwerelos Materials: Bronze sculpture with a dark patina on black granite base Size: 90 cm height, base, 6 x 17 x 14 cm Edition of 15

In this bronze sculpture the artist (unknown) has welded together a group of totems or monuments into a unified piece. T Neo-Dada Abstract Sculpture: Assemblages In contrast, abstra...

This beautiful laser cut sculpture is part of Ilanit`s Calligraphy series. It is made of laser cut aluminium and covered with automotive paint. Th...

Inspired by dance and weightlessness, Granville Beals' industrial metal sculptures are primarily about relationships. His original artworks capture the essence of Abstract Expression...

Welded, brazed sculpture on wooden base This is not signed or dated This work is unsigned. We were told it was the work of Seymour Lipton but as there is further documentation we are selling it as attributed and cannot guarantee it as such. Seymour Lipton (1903 – 1986) was an American abstract expressionist sculptor. He was a member of the New York School who gained widespread recognition in the 1950s. He initially trained as a dentist, like fellow sculptor Herbert Ferber, receiving his degree from Columbia University in 1927. In the late 1920s, he began to explore sculpture, creating clay portraits of family members and friends. His early choices of medium changed from wood to lead and then to bronze, and he is best known for his work in metal. Like his contemporary, Abstract Expressionist Jackson Pollock, and Arshile Gorky Lipton was influenced by Carl Jung’s work on the unconscious mind and the regenerative forces of nature. He translated these two-dimensional drawings into three-dimensional maquettes that enabled him to revise his ideas before creating the final sculpture. The forms that Lipton produced during this period were often zoomorphic, exemplifying the tension between the souls of nature and the automatism of the machine. He made several technical innovations, including brazing nickel silver rods onto sheets of Monel to create rust resistant forms. Seymour Lipton is best known for his textured torch welded metal sculptures...

Chester L. Williams Label on bottom, signed. Title: Promethium Medium: Bronze, Aluminum and wood. Approx. dimensions: 12 X 11 X 4 inches. Chester Lee Williams (1944-1919) was born in 1944, in Durham, North Carolina. Chester cultivated a creative mind that eventually led him to pursue an education in fine arts and sculpture at North Carolina Central University (BA) and the University of Michigan (MFA). In 1974, he made his way to Tallahassee and started instructing at FAMU. Students at the university have a deep appreciation for the jazz lover’s insight and skill. A lifelong artist, Chester's work has been featured in galleries and publications across the country. The body of his work produced over 45 years has evolved from smooth and supple sculptures into the more angular and defiant shapes seen in his later works. Chester has said: "All of the works are me. I still embrace every one of them." Chester enjoyed traveling and exploring different cultures. His art was influenced by his travel and knowledge of African culture. He was an educator for 37 years, teaching at Voorhees College, North Carolina Central University and Florida A&M University before retiring in 2011. He sold his first piece of art in the ninth grade to his homeroom teacher. (That early sale paid off — years later, that teacher’s husband, the president of a bank, commissioned Williams to create a sculpture for the bank’s lobby...

Inspired by dance and weightlessness, Granville Beals' industrial metal sculptures are primarily about relationships. Concerned with form an...

Danish mid century modern silverplated candelabrum sculpture. circa 1957 signed E. Dragsted Denmark. Dragsted goldsmiths, established in 1854, was purveyor to the danish royal family...