Arieh Merzer

Judaica Silvered Copper Repousse Sculpture Relief Plaque Shtetl Yeshiva Bochur

This is a mid 20th century mod abstract large bronze sculpture by Wolfgang Behl (German/American, 1918-1994). The sculptural group titled "The Family" features a mother and father with two children. Numbered 20/20. Signed. 21" H x 10 1/4" x 10 1/4 Wolfgang (Johann Wolfgang) Behl (1918 - 1994) was active/lived in Connecticut, Illinois / Germany. Known for Sculpture and as an architectural carver. A carver,designer, and teacher, Wolfgang Behl was born in Berlin, Germany where he studied at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts. His teacher was otto Hitzberger, sculptor and architecture carver. I have seen some his work, particularly in carved wood compared to Constantin Brancusi although this one seems way more reminiscent of Alberto Giacometti. In 1939, Behl came to the United States and taught briefly in Pennsylvania at the Perkiomen School and in Rhode Island at the Rhode Island School of Design. There in 1943, he won the Joseph N. Eisendrath prize for sculpture. He also became a friend of Louis Mayer, sculptor from Milwaukee. In 1944, Behl took a job as Art Director at the Lake Forest Academy in Lake Forest, Illinois, and he also began a one-year teaching assignment at the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee. The last years of his life until his death were in Hartford, Connecticut. Source: Peter C. Merrill, "German-Immigrant Artists in Early Milwaukee" Originally from Berlin, Germany, Mr. Behl immigrated to the United States in 1939 and became a citizen in 1947. He studied with Waldemar Raemisch at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin, and later at the Rhode Island School of Design. He began teaching at the Hartford Art School in 1955, retiring in 1983 to devote his time to sculpting. Mr. Behl had exhibitions throughout the United States and Germany. Some of his solo exhibitions include the Arts Exclusive in Simsbury from 1976 to 1981, and the Bertha Schaefer Gallery in New York City from 1950 to 1973. He showed at the New Britain Museum of American Art, in New Britain, Connecticut in 1969. He also had several retrospectives, including one at the Greater Hartford Jewish Community Center in West Hartford until the end of this month. His works in bronze have a German Expressionist quality to them a pathos found in the works of Kathe Kollwitz and the Expressionist movement. He was known for his classically inspired, but often surrealist sculpture. Among his most-well known pieces are a series of sculptures done for the University of Connecticut Health Center. Several examples of Behl’s work are found on the campus of the University of Hartford. He was included in the show Monumentality in Modern Sculpture at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Texas, 1957. Artists featured in the exhibition: Kenneth Armitage, Hans Arp, Ernst Barlach, Wolfgang Behl, Dorothy Dehner, Edgar Degas, José de Rivera, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Joseph Glasco, Julio González, Paul Granlund...

Leonard Baskin (1922-2000) Jewish Matriarchs, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah with Hebrew calligraphy Bronze, 1998 9.5 X 9 inches Judaic biblical bronze of Jewish mothers. Leonard Baskin (August 15, 1922 – June 3, 2000) was an American sculptor, illustrator, wood-engraver, printmaker, graphic artist, writer and teacher. Baskin was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey. While he was a student at Yale University, he founded Gehenna Press, a small private press specializing in fine book production. From 1953 until 1974, he taught printmaking and sculpture at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Subsequently Baskin also taught at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He lived most of his life in the U.S., but spent nine years in Devon at Lurley Manor, Lurley, near Tiverton, close to his friend Ted Hughes, for whom he illustrated Crow. Sylvia Plath dedicated Sculpto to Leonard Baskin in her famous work, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960). The Funeral Contege (1997) bronze, Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Washington, D.C. His public commissions include a bas relief for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and a bronze statue of a seated figure, erected in 1994 for the Holocaust Memorial in Ann Arbor, Michigan. His works are owned by many major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the British Museum, the Honolulu Museum of Art, the Udinotti Museum of Figurative Art and the Vatican Museums. The archive of his work at the Gehenna Press was acquired by the Bodleian Library at Oxford, England, in 2009. The McMaster Museum of Art in Hamilton, Ontario owns over 200 of his works (some religious and biblical), most of which were donated by his brother Rabbi Bernard Baskin. Contemporary Religious Imagery in American Art. Catalog for an exhibition held at the Ringling Museum of Art, March 1-31, 1974. Artists represented: David Aronson, Leonard Baskin, Max Beckmann, Hyman Bloom, Fernando Botero, Paul Cadmus, Marvin Cherney, Arthur G. Dove, Philip Evergood, Adolph Gottlieb, Jonah Kinigstein, Arman, Rico Lebrun, Jack Levine, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Abraham Rattner, Ben Shahn, Mark Tobey, Max Weber, William Zorach and others.In 1955, he was one of eleven New York artists featured in the opening exhibition at the Terrain Gallery, they showed many great artists, Chaim Koppelman, for many years, headed the gallery's Print Division; printmakers such as Will Barnet, Leonard Baskin, Robert Conover...