These terracotta sculptures were produced in 1929-1930 by Charles L. Morgan, cast from the original plaster models sculpted by Frank Lloyd Wright. The figures represented Wright’s designs for proposed monumental entry figures to the Community of Nakoma Country Club in Madison, Wisconsin, which were never ultimately completed. These designs were likely the last figurative sculptural works created by Wright, his interest in exploring natural themes and material taking priority in his later designs.
In 1914, artist and sculptor Alfonso Iannelli came to Chicago from Los Angeles to work on Frank Lloyd Wright’s Midway Gardens. Iannelli created the famous Sprite figures, the angular, column-like figures that graced Midway’s three-acre beer garden. Iannelli and his artist wife, Margaret, moved to Chicago in 1915 and eventually settled in Park Ridge in 1920, where they maintained a studio workshop.
This plaster study for a larger bronze sculpture was made by the prominent Illinois sculptor, educator, and writer Lorado Taft. The full-scale bronze statue was erected in Urbana, Illinois, in 1926, where it still stands today. The sculpture was a commission made possible through a bequest of a family that had known Lincoln during his circuit lawyer days from 1837-1848.
Born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1926, Carolyn moved to Carbondale, Illinois, in 1949 to teach art at the Allyn Training School at Southern Illinois University. After marrying George Plochmann in 1950, Carolyn became a full-time studio artist, spent her summers in Woodstock, New York, and was represented by the Kennedy Galleries in New York from 1970-2005.
This sculpture was a gift to the people of the State of Illinois from French vermouth producer Noilly-Prat. This was one of many gifts packed into vintage railway box cars known as the Merci Train, or French Gratitude Train, of 1949. The purpose of this gift was to acknowledge the more than $40 million in food and aid collected in 1947 by private citizens in the United States and sent to France and Italy after World War II.
Miyoko Ito was an important artist in Chicago, admired by her contemporaries for her distinctive approach to painting. Her delicate, quick brush strokes and remarkable color combinations give her paintings a lively pulse. Ito was born to Japanese immigrant parents in Berkeley, California. She developed artistically under the influence of a wide range of movements and revolutions in the arts: Cubism, Bauhaus, Abstract Expressionism, and individual artists as diverse as Pablo Picasso, Hans Hoffman, and Paul Cezanne.
In 1916, at the age of 8, Marion Perkins moved from Arkansas to Chicago to live with his aunt, joining the ranks of over 500,000 African Americans who moved to Chicago from the south during a period now referred to as the Great Migration. He lived in Bronzeville, Chicago’s predominately African American neighborhood and home to many of its most outstanding writers and artists.
Moon House, created in 1957, clearly reveals Shrode’s full grasp of the fine art versus craft debate. Here, Shrode shapes the vessel form into fine art, showing the influences of Abstract Expressionism and Asian pottery techniques, while constructing innovative flowing relationships of positive form and negative space.
A monumental sculpture, this majestic horse commemorates the spirit of the people of the midwest. Named after the donors’ favorite horse, Kimball, the draft horse is a symbol of the strength and courage of the early settlers of Illinois and all who continue to work the land.
Mt. Vernon, Illinois, native Ivan Summers established himself in the early 20th century as one of the accomplished practitioners of American Impressionism with colorful landscapes of his adopted home of upstate New York. He graduated from the St. Louis School and Museum of Fine Arts where he was an award-winning artist.
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