Robert Willson: Image Maker - Hardcover

Kangas, Matthew; Wilson, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0295982187 ISBN 13: 9780295982182

Publisher: Univ of Washington Pr, 2002

Synopsis

Robert Willson (1912-2000) was one of the most complex and contradictory American artists of the past century. Among the first American sculptors to use solid glass in a small factory setting, he was at once regional and international, steeped in pre-Columbian art as well as Texas folklore. Educated in the Southwest and Mexico, he discovered the glass studios of Murano, Italy, at the age of forty-four and never looked back. In Robert Willson: Image-Maker, author Matthew Kangas fills in a gaping niche in American art history, the tale of the gangly fellow who sounded like actor James Stweart, fell in love with Venice, and spent the next thirty-seven summers there making solid glass sculptures.

About this title

About the Author:

Matthew Kangas is an art critic living in Seattle.

From Library Journal:

The American studio glass movement is today considered to have sprung from a small group of artists who, following the lead of American ceramic artists, both designed and physically produced their own artworks rather than relying on skilled workmen in the European tradition. One artist who diverged from the main branch of American studio glass and its emphasis on objects handblown by the artist was Robert Willson (1912-2000). Through photographs and the artist's own writings, art critic Kangas (Jim Leedy: Artist Across Boundaries) documents Willson's adventurous artistic career, which took him from 1930s Mexico, where he met artists such as Jos Clemente Orozco and Frida Kahlo, to the South Pacific in World War II, to a pottery in Mountainburg, AR, to teaching at the University of Miami, and more. Willson's subsequent love affair with glass began in Corning, NY, where he met the dean of early 20th-century art glass, Frederick Carder, and was awarded a grant to travel to Venice in 1956. For the next 40 summers, he worked with the master glass craftsmen of the Venetian isle of Murano in creating a colorful body of solid (not blown) glass sculpture. This beautifully illustrated and clearly written book is the first major assessment of this overlooked artist. Suitable for art and craft collections. David McClelland, Philadelphia
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Univ of Washington Pr
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0295982187
• ISBN 13: 9780295982182
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 171