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PEOPLE:
Caring - Chaim Gross
Austrian-born sculptor, artist, and teacher, moved to the U.S.
at age 17, where he became part of New York's "Fourteenth
Street School", and later participated in WPA programs. Gross
revived the art of direct carving into wood as a sculptural medium,
making a daring break with academic tradition, in which the artist
was increasingly detached from the finished artwork. Gross's exuberant
works are invariably figurative, simplifying mass and omitting
detail to enhance fundamental meaning. His preferred subject matter
- acrobats, circus performers, mothers and children - are a celebration
of joy and maternal love, a fusion of folk art and the avant-garde.
Complex vertical and horizontal compositions of monumental interlocking
forms symbolize the interdependence of humanity, another recurring
theme. Later works in bronze, like "Caring", allowed
freer, more daringly balanced acrobatic compositions. Despite
its more serious theme, "Caring" is typical of Gross's
preoccupation with mothers and children, the mother here a column
of support for the precariously balanced child, whose arms reach
out to a limitless future. The faces are generalized, impersonal,
emphasizing the harmonious, rhythmic, almost abstract composition
of triangular volumes above and below the narrow waist.
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