Book Description

This book offers the first comprehensive survey of the art of Richard Stankiewicz (1922-1983) and reassesses its place in the art of his time. Stankiewicz's welded sculpture of rusted iron and cast-off steel played an important role in the redefinition of art in New York during the 1950s. Yet, as is the case of several artists who figured significantly in that heady decade when the New York School came to international prominence, the full range of Stankiewicz's art has not been fully appreciated. sculpture of the 1950s within the context of the artist's 30 year career. Although Stankiewicz has been included in important group exhibitions of Assemblage, Neo-Dada, and Abstract Expressionist sculpture, his art has eluded conclusive critical identification. This elusiveness may be attributed to the artist's persistently and subtly subversive stance toward the dominant artistic vocabularies of a partisan era in which the character of art and its audience changed radically. sculpture in relation to the aesthetic attitudes and critical concerns of post-World War II American art. Following an Introduction by Addison Gallery Director Adam D. Weinberg, is an extended critical look at Stankiewicz, his life, and his achievement by Emmie Donadio. The artist is placed within the 20th-century European avant-garde tradition in an essay by Jon Wood. Martin Friedman's Putting It All Together positions Stankiewicz's work in relation to that of his contemporaries in 1950s New York. The book also includes a narrative chronology, a bibliography, and generous illustrations of key sculptures by the artist. illustrated with his own art and that of his Euro-American contemporaries and predecessors. It is must reading for collectors, scholars, and anyone wishing to enlarge their conception of a pivotal period in modern art - and the unique achievement of a sculptor who can be classic, iconoclastic, and witty all at the same time.