Bruce Beasley (Born 1929)

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

Artist Unknown

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

Alan Wright (1927 - 1982)

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 (Born 1925)

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

Milton Hebald (1917 – 2015)

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 (1892 - 1971)

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

Jose De Creeft (1884 - 1982)

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

Artist Unknown

• Title: Untitled
• ‍Scale: Height 12”
• ‍Medium: Stone
• ‍Location: Inside Wingspread

K. Krause

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

O.U. Shaffer

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

William Dickey King (1925 - 2015)

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

Artist Unknown

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

Artist Unknown

• 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

U. Farnum

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