Bronze Sculpture – Public Art and Architecture from Around the World

Os Redeiros

Posted by Cindy on March 20, 2015

Mar 202015

This striking and strong sculpture is by Ramon Conde and stands on the Gran Via in Vigo Spain.

Titled Os Redeiros it is of seven nude fisherman straining to pull in a net. The city of Vigo is a major fishing port in Spain.

Ramón Conde was born in Ourense Spain December 18, 1951, the son of a stone sculptor.

In 1971 he joined the Faculty of Arts in Santiago.

He has shown all over Europe and in the United States.

Other public works include the Arc de Triomphe (Lugo), the monument to Alonso III de Fonseca (in the Cloister of the Palacio de Fonseca, Santiago de Compostela), the monument to Coleman and Reverter and the Milkmaid (Ourense), the True Contrast (Pontevedra) or Homage to Emigration (in Vigo).

Conde currently has his studio is in Milladoiro, near Santiago de Compostela.

Sprinter at the Koret

Posted by Cindy on February 2, 2015

Feb 022015

Koret Health and Recreation Center
2130 Fulton Street
Inner Richmond

This bronze sculpture sits directly to the right of the entry door to the University of San Francisco’s, Koret Health and Recreation Center.

It is an 8′ tall bronze by Edith Peres-Lethmate. According to the Smithsonian the sculpture is a large-scale version of a sculpture executed in 1976. The sculpture was commissioned by the University and was funded by the university’s Class of 1986.

According to the Koret blog ““Sprinter,” was originally created on a smaller scale in celebration of the 1984 Olympic games.”

Edith Peres-Lethmate was born 1927 in Koblentz Germany and is primarily known for her sports sculptures. Ms Peres-Lethmate still resides in Germany.

Dr. Burt Brent and his Hippopatomus

Posted by Cindy on January 28, 2015

Jan 282015

San Francisco Zoo
Sloat and The Great Highway
Lakeside

This hippopotamus is not only a wonderful sculpture but a favorite climbing creature in the San Francisco Zoo. Heavyweight was sculpted by Dr. Burt Brent of Portola Valley.

According to a 2007 article in the Almanac:

Dr. Burt Brent, a plastic surgeon with an office in Woodside, has built his career and an international reputation on creating living ears for children born without ears or with deformed ears. He has pioneered a technique for building new ears out of the kid’s own rib cartilage; the ears actually grow as the child grows.

Over the last 30 years, Dr. Brent has provided real ears — and the dignity that goes with them — to more than 1,800 children from all over the world. In 2005 he received the Clinician of the Year Award for lifetime achievement from the American Association of Plastic Surgeons.

Officially, Dr. Brent is an associate professor at the Stanford Medical Center. He does six to eight operations a week as a staff surgeon at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View.

Heavyweight, was donated to the zoo by Dr. Brent.

El Caballero de Paris

Posted by Cindy on January 22, 2015

Jan 222015

El Caballero de Paris Sculpted by José Villa Soberón

This is one of my favorite public sculptures in Havana, and as you can see how the patina has been worn off, I am not the only one that has a fondness for this character.

El Caballero de París was José Maria López Lledín (1920s-1977), was a well-known street person in Havana, Cuba in the 1950s.

Lledín lost his mind and became “El Caballero de París” when he was arrested in late 1920 and sent to the prison at “El Castillo del Príncipe” in Havana, Cuba. The reasons are unknown but he always claimed in all interviews his innocence.

He sported long unkempt dark brown hair a beard and twisted uncut fingernails. He always dressed in black, covered with a black cloak, even in the summer heat. He was usually seen with a portfolio filled with papers and a bag where he carried his belongings

The stories of how Lledín got his nickname are many, however, his sister Mercedes stated that he got his nickname due to a girlfriend from Paris, who was killed during her trip to join him in Havana.

The sculpture was done by Cuban based artist Jose Villa Soberón in 2001 – it sits in front of Saint Francis of Asisi in Havana.

Barnyard Watchdogs

Posted by Cindy on November 3, 2014

Nov 032014

San Francisco Zoo
Entry to the Children’s Zoo

Barnyard Watchdogs by Burt Brent

This cute sculpture and climbing item is by Dr. Burt Brent. Dr. Brent is a reconstructive plastic surgeon best known for his work in reconstructing the absent outer ear. He has repaired ear defects in 1,800 patients, most of them children born with ear deformities such as Microtia. He also reconstructs ears lost or due to some form of trauma. Dr. Brent is now retired.

Brent grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and was highly influenced by his maternal grandfather who taught him cabinetry and woodworking. Although he considered a career in art, he was always surrounded by medicine, because his father was a physician who had an office in the basement of their home.

As an avid naturalist, Brent is a member of the Society of Animal Artists and has created sculptures of numerous of birds and mammals, two of which grace the San Francisco Zoo.

Hearst Grizzly Gulch

Posted by Cindy on October 21, 2014

Oct 212014

San Francisco Zoo

This grizzly by Tom Schrey graces the Hearst Grizzly Gulch building at the SF Zoo. Tom has a degree from California College of the Arts and presently works at Artworks Foundry.

The following was excerpted from a June 15, 2007 SF Gate article by Patricia Yollin:

Three summers ago, two grizzly bear orphans in Montana were trying to fend off starvation. Now they are coddled ursine superstars living in San Francisco.

On Thursday, the public got its first glimpse of the twins’ opulent new home as Hearst Grizzly Gulch, a $3.7 million habitat at the San Francisco Zoo, opened for business. Kachina and Kiona, whose species adorns the California state flag, quickly demonstrated that they knew how to work the Flag Day crowd.

Proximity is one of the exhibit’s highlights. A thick glass window is the only thing separating humans and carnivores in one section of Grizzly Gulch, which also includes a meadow, 20,000-gallon shallow pool, heated rocks, 2-ton tree stump, dig pit, herb garden and 20-foot-high rock structure.

“My initial reaction was, ‘Where are we going to put them?’ ” recalled Manuel Mollinedo, the zoo’s executive director.

The sisters, now 4 years old, moved into a concrete enclosure that’s part of an old-fashioned bear grotto built in the 1930s. It will serve as night quarters and adjoins the new habitat, the result of a fundraising campaign by Carroll — who said he envisioned an endless series of “$100,000 lunches” before Stephen Hearst, vice president and general manager of the Hearst Corp., set up a $1 million donation.

Hearst was mindful of his family’s connection to grizzlies. His great-grandfather, San Francisco Examiner publisher William Randolph Hearst, arranged for the 1889 capture of a wild grizzly that he named Monarch — his paper’s slogan was “Monarch of the Dailies” — who inspired the creation of the city’s first zoo.

The Zoo’s first major exhibits were built in the 1930’s by the depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA) at a cost of $3.5 million. The animal exhibits were, in the words of the architect, Lewis Hobart, “ten structures designed to house the animals and birds in quarters as closely resembling native habitats as science can devise.” These new structures included Monkey Island, Lion House, Elephant House, a sea lion pool, an aviary, and bear grottos. These spacious, moated enclosures were among the first bar-less exhibits in the country.

Gwynn Murrill at the San Francisco Zoo

Posted by Cindy on September 15, 2014

Sep 152014

San Francisco Zoo
Sloat and The Great Highway
Lakeside

Cougar III by Gwynn Murrill

Gwynn Murrill is a Los Angeles based artist who received her MFA from UCLA in 1972. Murrill has three sculptures at the San Francisco Zoo. Cougar III and Tiger 2 are at the front entryway and Hawk V is located at the Koret Animal Resource Center.

Tiger 2

Gwynn Murrill has always worked with animals as her subject matter. Stripped of surface detail the sculptures are almost abstract in form.

Hawk V

The Arts Commission purchased Hawk V for $29,000. Tiger 2 was purchased for $85,000, and Cougar III for $65,000. All three sculptures were purchased with funds generated by the City’s percent-for-art program, which allocates 2% of capital projects for art enrichment.

While I think that all three of these sculptures are lovely, and truly adored by children that visit the zoo, I am not sure why Ms. Merrill (while a Californian, not a San Franciscan) has been given the exclusive commissions for the bronzes in the zoo. There are many bronzes sitting throughout the zoo and they are every bit as spectacular, including two by local Doctor Burt Brent.

Maternite

Posted by Cindy on September 8, 2014

Sep 082014

Jewish Senior Living Group
Orignally known as Jewish Home of the Aged
120 Silver Avenue
Excelsior District

Ursula Malbin was born on April 12, 1917, in Berlin to Jewish parents, both doctors of medicine. While in Germany she worked as a cabinet-maker. In 1939, a few weeks before World War II, but after her family had already left the country, she fled Nazi Germany, alone, penniless and without a passport.

She found herself in Geneva when the war broke out, and there she met the sculptor Henri Paquet, whom she married in 1941. Since 1967, Ursula Malbin has divided her creative life between the Artists’ Village of Ein Hod in Israel and the village of Troinex near Geneva in Switzerland.

Maternite was a gift to the Jewish Home by Mr. and Mrs. Victor Marcus in 1970.

According to the Jewish Home Website:

The Jewish Home of San Francisco first opened its doors to residents in 1891. The complex has undergone many periods of development, including the construction of a Brutalist-style tower known as “Annex A” in 1969, designed by Howard A. Friedman, and its associated courtyard and fountain in 1970, designed by Lawrence Halprin. The courtyard is enclosed by Annex A (now known as the Goodman Building) and the Beaux Arts-inspired Main Building on an almost 9-acre site.

The design for the courtyard employs a central fountain, a generous expanse of lawn and deciduous and evergreen trees to create an urban oasis for residents. The fountain is composed of a series of cascading, rectilinear, overlapping concrete planes, animated with water that streams over them and collects in a shallow sunken pool. The concrete planes form an almost stage-like horizontal surface, upon which reclines a mother and child sculpture by Israeli artist Ursula Malbin. The fountain and its foreground apron are nestled into a shallow-sloping lawn edged with a curvilinear concrete seat wall and wide sidewalk with moveable seating. A mixture of pine trees and pollarded sycamores create a buffer along the courtyard’s edge.

The significance of Halprin’s own Jewish heritage and his role as an active member of the 1970 Jerusalem Committee, assessing the city’s master plan at the time of this commission, brings a unique cultural dimension to the importance of this Bay Area project.

****

Although you must enter the main building to access the garden, the Jewish Home is extremely accommodating, and this was not a problem what-so-ever on the day that I visited.

Mission Dolores Cemetery

Posted by Cindy on August 13, 2013

Aug 132013

16th and Dolores
The Mission District

Mission Dolores is one of my favorite places in all of San Francisco. I try to visit at least once every two months or so. The history of the mission is well know to every Californian (we are required to study them in the 2nd grade), so I will not go into that. Wikipedia most likely has a wonderful dissertation if you are so inclined. My favorite part of the mission is the cemetery. When I first started going, many, many years ago, the cemetery was in very sad shape. Over the years a significant amount of restoration has taken place, making it a wonderful respite from the hustle and bustle of our fair city. The plants are representative of the 1790’s when the mission was founded, the garden also contains an Ohlone Indian ethno-botanic garden and examples of Native American plants and artifacts

Mission Dolores is the final resting place of some 5,000 Ohlone, Miwok, and other First Californians who built Mission Dolores and were its earliest members and founders. Other notables include the first Mexican governor, Luis Antonio Arguello, the first commandant of the Presidio, Lieutenant Moraga, and victims of the Committee of Vigilance, Cora, Casey, and Sullivan. Cemetery markers date from 1830 to about 1898.

Just before you enter the cemetery you are greeted with a small statue of Father Junipero Serra, the founder of the Mission Movement in California.

This life-size bronze sculpture was commissioned by the Hannon Foundation they are being placed at many spots around the country. The artist is Dale Smith.

Pennsylvania Comes to San Francisco

Posted by Cindy on June 27, 2013

Jun 272013

600 California Street
Chinatown

These two bronze plaques were originally the doors to a hand operated elevator. The doors, designed by Lee O. Lawrie in 1930-1931 were in the Education Building of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Capitol Park in Harrisburg.

The sculpture was one of six sets of elevator doors that the artist originally fabricated. This set of door panels remained there until 1972, when the building’s hand-operated elevators were replaced with automatic ones. From about 1980 to 1989, the doors were in a private collection in Virginia. They were installed at the new Federal Home Bank in 1990.

Lee Oskar Lawrie (1877-1963) was born in Rixdorf, Germany, and came to the United States in 1882 as a young child, settling in Chicago. It was there, at the age of 14, that he began working for the sculptor Richard Henry Park.

In 1892 he assisted many of the sculptors in Chicago, constructing the “White City” for the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. Following the completion of the work at the Exposition, Lawrie returned East and became an assistant to William Ordway Partridge. The next decade found him working with other established sculptors:Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Philip Martiny, Alexander Phimister Proctor, John William Kitson and others. His work at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St Louis, 1904, under Karl Bitter, the foremost architectural sculptor of the time, allowed Lawrie to further develop both his skills and his reputation as an architectural sculptor.

Lawrie received a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from Yale University in 1910. He was an instructor in Yale’s School of Fine Arts from 1908 to 1919 and taught in the architecture program at Harvard University from 1910 to 1912.

His most prominent work is the free-standing bronze Atlas (installed 1937) at New York City’s Rockefeller Center.

This panel on the left has allegorical figures representing Exploration, Literature, Architecture and Drama.

The allegorical figures on the right represent Religion, Physical Labor, Sculpture and Music.

The King of Beasts in Golden Gate Park

Posted by Cindy on May 11, 2013

May 112013

Golden Gate Park
Music Concourse

This lion sits outside of the new DeYoung Museum near the Pool of Enchantment. It is by Roland Hinton Perry. Created in 1898 it was given to the City of San Francisco in 1906 by San Francisco jeweler Shreve and Company. The sculpture survived a fire in Shreve’s showroom caused by the ’06 earthquake.

The red stone the sculpture sits on was donated by John D. McGilvray. John D. McGilvray Jr. and Sr. worked in the stone and masonry contracting business in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Palo Alto, California. ( McGilvray-Raymond Granite Company) Together they helped build many of San Francisco’s best known buildings including the City Hall, the Civic Auditorium, the Public Library, the State Building, the St. Francis Hotel, the Emporium, the Flood Building, the Stanford University Chapel and the original buildings on the Stanford campus.

Roland Hinton Perry was born in New York City to George and Ione Hinton Perry January 25, 1870. He entered the École des Beaux Arts in 1890 at the age of 19. At 21, he studied at the Académie Julian and Académie Delécluse in Paris and focused on sculpture, the medium in which he would achieve the most artistic success.

After returning to the United States, Perry received a commission to sculpt a series of bas-reliefs for the Library of Congress inWashington, D.C. in 1894. The following year, he was commissioned to create the Court of Neptune Fountain in front of the Library’s main building, now known as the Thomas Jefferson Building. He died October 28, 1941.

200 California Street

Posted by Cindy on September 23, 2012

Sep 232012

200 California Street
Financial District

Hawaiian by Gwynn Murrill – Bronze- 2002

This is part of San Francisco’s 1% for Art Program.

San Francisco’s “Downtown Plan” adopted in 1985, was developed under the fundamental assumption that significant employment and office development growth would occur. New commercial development would provide new revenue sources to cover a portion of the costs of necessary urban service improvements. Specific programs were created to satisfy needs for additional housing, transit, childcare, open space, and art. The public art requirement created by this plan is commonly known as the “1% for Art” program. This requirement, governed by Section 429 of the Planning Code, provides that construction of a new building or addition of 25,000 square feet or more within the downtown C-3 district, triggers a requirement that provide public art that equals at least 1% of the total construction cost be provided.

Gwynn Murill was born in Michigan and raised in Southern California, Murrill received her BFA and MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Carlos II, King of Spain Gazes out over Harding Park

Posted by Cindy on September 19, 2012

Sep 192012

7-99 Harding Road
Lake Merced – Sunset District

The sculpture of Carlos III was a gift to the city from King Juan Carlos I of Spain in honor of the Bicentennial of the City of San Francisco.

CARLOS III, KING OF SPAIN

Settler of California, champion of the cause of the American
Independence, who directed Colonel Don Juan Bautista de Anza
to establish a presidio, a mission and a city in San Francisco,
in the year 1776.

Donated by King Juan Carlos I of Spain on the Bicentennial of
the City of San Francisco, 1976.

Federico Coullaut – sculptor

Federico Coullaut-Valera Mendigutia (1912–1989) was a Spanish sculptor. The son of sculptor Lorenzo Coullaut-Valera, he was born in Madrid.
He continued the work begun by his father in the Plaza de España. Coullaut-Valera Mendigutia finished the monument in this square between 1956 and 1957. Another statue of Carlos III by Coullaut-Valera stands in Olvera Street, Los Angeles. It was presented in 1976 and dedicated by Juan Carlos I of Spain and Sofia of Spain in 1987. Carlos had ordered the founding of the town that became Los Angeles.

This statue was relocated from Justin Herman Plaza, along with Juan Bautista de Anza in 2003. At that time he was placed upon a new base. The bronze is 9-1/2 ‘ H x 38 ” W x 44 ” D and weighs approximately 2000 pounds.

Hermes and Dionysus Shake it Up

Posted by Cindy on August 30, 2012

Aug 302012

411 Sansome Street
Financial District

This bronze, done in 1986, titled Hermes and Dionysus-Monument to Analysis is by Arman. (1928-2005)

The French-born American artist Arman told an interviewer in 1968. “I have never been — how do you say it? A dilettante.” Arman’s vast artistic output ranges from drawings and prints to monumental public sculpture. His work—strongly influenced by Dada, and in turn a strong influence on Pop Art—is in the collections of such institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

Born in Nice in 1928, Armand Pierre Fernandez signed his early work with his first name only; he retained a printer’s 1958 misspelling of his name for the rest of his career. After studies at the Ecole Nationale des Arts Décoratifs in Nice, Arman went to Paris to study art history at the Ecole du Louvre.

Enamored by the artistic energy of New York in the ’60s, Arman moved into the Chelsea Hotel in 1967, and became an American citizen (adopting the official name of Armand P. Arman) in 1973.

Throughout his career, Arman remained passionately engaged with human rights issues important to him. For five years, he served as President of the New York Chapter of Artists for Amnesty International. In 1990, on the occasion of a major retrospective of his work that was to be the inaugural attraction at the Museum of Contemporary and Modern Art in his hometown of Nice, Arman made a major statement against religious prejudice. Only weeks before the scheduled opening, Nice hosted the convention of the Front National, a right-wing French political party whose guest of honor had been a German Neo-Nazi. The Mayor of Nice honored the F.N., and in the uproar that followed made anti-Semitic remarks. In protest, Arman cancelled the retrospective, and, as a consequence, waited until 2002 for his work to be exhibited in the city of his birth. Some friends had advised Arman not to mix politics with art. He responded, “If you are not willing to mix with politics sometimes, politics may one day mix with you—whether you want it or not.”

After passing away in 2005 his wife, Corice Canton Arman, formed the Arman P. Arman Trust, which handles his work today.

Hermes and Dionysus is part of the Embarcadero Center Art Collection. The collection was created by Embarcadero Center developer David Rockefeller and Embarcadero Center architect John C. Portman, Jr., who shared the vision of integrating fine architecture with fine art.

Civic Center – Henry Moore

Posted by Cindy on March 21, 2012

Mar 212012

Civic Center

Davies Symphony Hall

Corner Van Ness and Grove Street

Large Four Piece Reclining Figure by Henry Moore – 1973 – Bronze

This piece, by Henry Moore, sits prominently in the Civic Center, and an easy one to see and enjoy by anyone that visits San Francisco.

In the early 1970s Moore produced a group of monumental sculptures relying heavily on the curve or arc as its principal motif. This work exemplifies the trend, its complex semi-abstract composition and highly polished bronze patina making it a ‘difficult’ work to read. The hollows, voids and truncated elements do, however, bind together very successfully to make a sculpture filled with warmth and movement.

There are seven casts of this sculpture around the world. San Francisco’s, reportedly purchased for $400,000, was a gift of Mr. and Mrs. Earl Rouda in 1980.

Henry Spencer Moore (30 July 1898 – 31 August 1986) was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art.

His forms are usually abstractions of the human figure, typically depicting mother-and-child or reclining figures. Moore’s works are usually suggestive of the female body, apart from a phase in the 1950s when he sculpted family groups. His forms are generally pierced or contain hollow spaces. Many interpreters liken the undulating form of his reclining figures to the landscape and hills of his birthplace, Yorkshire.

Moore was born in Castleford, the son of a coal miner. He became well-known through his carved marble and larger-scale abstract cast bronze sculptures, and was instrumental in introducing a particular form of modernism to the United Kingdom. His ability in later life to fulfill large-scale commissions made him exceptionally wealthy. Yet he lived frugally and most of the money he earned went towards endowing the Henry Moore Foundation, which continues to support education and promotion of the arts.

Locks and Keys for Harry Bridges

Posted by Cindy on March 18, 2001

Mar 182001

Lining the 200 Block of Stevenson Street
Off of 3rd near Market

Locks and Keys For Harry Bridges was commissioned by Millennium Partners/ WGB Ventures Inc and the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency. The piece is by artist Mildred Howard, who has been in this site before.

Howard is known for her sculptural installations and mixed media assemblage work, Mildred Howard has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Adeline Kent Award from the San Francisco Art Institute, the Joan Mitchell Foundation and a fellow-ship from the California Arts Council.

When Howard was asked how she came by the image of a key and lock for the project, she answered that she was inspired by Harry Bridges as he opened up doors and that her locks are open to reflect that.

Harry Bridges (July 28, 1901–March 30, 1990) was an Australian-born American union leader, in the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which he helped form and led for over 40 years. He was prosecuted by the U.S. government during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. His conviction by a federal jury for having lied about his Communist Party membership was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1953.