Robert Graham  (American, 1938-2008) 

Robert Graham (American, 1938–2008) was a sculptor best known for his public monuments and female nudes. Born in Mexico City, Graham studied art history at San Jose State College, and painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. After graduating, he lived in London for a few years before establishing a studio in Venice, CA. Graham's early work includes a series of beeswax figures of nude women enclosed in Plexiglass boxes. He soon began casting single bodies in bronze, and working on a monumental scale. In 1984, he completed Olympic Gateway, two muscular figures without heads or feet, for the Memorial Coliseum at the Olympic Games of that year. Other civic monuments include a life-size figure of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1997) for the Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C., a monument of jazz composer Duke Ellington (1997), and a memorial to boxing champion Joe Louis (1986), which consists of his arm and clenched fist. Graham's work on a smaller scale focuses on idealized, often headless female nudes. His work is included in the collections of several museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.