A Century of Modern Sculpture: The Patsy and Raymond Nasher Collection

Selected by Carmen Gimenez and Steven A. Nash. With an interview between Raymond Nasher and Steven Nash as well as an essay by Michael Brenson.

The Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Collection is renowned as one of the finest collections of Modern and contemporary sculpture in the world. Remarkable for its uniformly high level of quality as well as the depth of its representation of key artists, the collection spans more than a century, from the pioneering work of Paul Gauguin, Auguste Rodin, and Medardo Rosso late in the nineteenth century to contemporary
developments reflected in works by Magdalena Abakanowicz, Tony Cragg, Claes Oldenburg, and Richard Serra, among others.

The Nashers began to collect earnestly in the early 1960s, and while they acquired significant holdings of contemporary paintings and prints, pre-Columbian art, and Guatemalan textiles, sculpture became a primary passion. Although Patsy Nasher passed away in 1988, Raymond Nasher continues to expand the collection, with an eye toward rounding it out historically and adding work by exciting young artists.

Lavishly illustrated in this volume are 136 works by fifty-eight artists, a selection that surveys many of the most important sculptural developments of the past one hundred years. In no other historical period have the definitions of sculpture been so dramatically challenged and expanded. The Nasher Collection is a celebration of the creative energies behind this Modernist tradition. Particularly notable is the
presentation in depth of such masters as Alexander Calder, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Alberto Giacometti, Henri Matisse, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso, and David Smith; groupings of multiple works allow a broad picture of each artist's achievement.

This catalogue not only provides specific examples from the Nashers' well-known collection of modern sculpture but also offers several essays that give an informative, condensed history of the development of modern sculpture. In "Early Modern Figurative Sculpture," editor Nash examines works by Rodin, Picasso, Moore, Giacometti and others. In "Sculpture in the Constructivist Tradition," Nan Rosenthal discusses work arising out of cubism, such as pieces by Duchamp-Villon, Calder, Hepworth, Noguchi, etc. Robert Rosenblum looks at recent work by an electic group, including Oldenburg, Lichtenstein, Beuys, Borofsky and LeWitt. And Elizabeth Frank tells about the Nashers' lives and their collecting principles. These lucid, readable essays add interest to an attractive collection of work.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.