Albert W. Wein Art

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...

Agathon Leonard (French, 1841 - 1923) Art Nouveau Silvered Bronze A French Art Nouveau gilt bronze sculpture, "Marguerite", by Agathon Léonard of Margeruite, placing a flower in her...

Rotazione Ascensoriale I , 1993 bronze sculpture h15 x 12.5 x 8 cm approx , ( including base ) , diameter Ø approx 13.5 cm limited edition , numbered: 15/70 signed dated and numbered...

Bronze Sculpture 'Bolas IV' by Carola Eggeling Abstract sculpture with beautiful curved lines. German bronze sculpture Bronze Patina Certific...

Group of Three WPA Era Paintings, American, circa 1930s-1950s. From left to right, they are: 1) Brick mason oil painting, American, circa 1930s. It ...

Title: Autumn Trees in French Villa Garden Modernist Watercolour Landscape Guy Nicod (French 1923 - 2021) Gouache on artist paper, unframed Size: 19.75 x 12.75 inches (height x widt...

Anton Nelson (i.e. Antoine Joseph van den Kerckhoven) (1849 Brussels - after 1910 ibid.), Bust of a young woman, c. 1890. Patinated bronze on cast base, 30 cm (total height) x 20 cm ...

Because Joseph Mortimer Lichtenauer is best known for his public murals, it's not surprising that this easel painting -- with its frieze-like array of nude and Classically dressed fi...

"Femme de luxe" (Bronze) by Erte Type: Sculpture Media: Patina on Bronze Dimensions: 13 3/4" High Year Produced: 1986 Edition Size: 500 Numbered, 35 AP Edition Number: 13/500 In Exce...

Antique Victorian Watercolour of Whitby Harbour by 19th Century British Artist William Langley (1852–1922) dating back to Circa 1891 Art measures 19 x 10.5 inches Frame measures 2...

Antique French Art Deco Bronze bust sculpture of a beautiful young woman, by Marcel Andre Bouraine (1886-1948), and cast by the Etling foundry, Paris, circa 1920. The bronze depicts...

Oil on canvas, estate sigend on the reverse, presented in a simple frame measuring 21.375" x 24.375" overall. William Sharp was born on June 13, 1900, in Lemberg, Austria, where h...