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Exhibition extended past June 30th
An exhibition of works by John Storrs will be on view at Meredith Ward Fine Art from May 6 through June 30, 2011. The show will feature 29 works, including sculptures, paintings, drawings and woodblock prints, dating from 1917 to 1941. This is Storrs’s first gallery exhibit in New York since 1994 and coincides with John Storrs: Machine-Age Modernist currently on view at the Grey Art Gallery.
Born in Chicago, Storrs moved to Paris in 1911 and studied under sculptor Auguste Rodin. He became interested in Cubism, Futurism and Vorticism, and it is in this period that Storrs began to develop the machine-like aesthetic for which he is best known. A sculpture from 1919, Girl With Bangs marries representation with geometry. It simultaneously showcases Storrs’s basis in and distancing from figuration. Storrs started painting seriously in 1930, while continuing to sculpt, and Noel, 1932, showcases the artist’s transition to complete abstraction. Devoid of representation, he employs in oil the complex forms found in his sculpture.
After spending time in Europe and the Middle East, Storrs returned to the United States and studied sculpture under Bela Pratt at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and later, Charles Grafly at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. His early work from the teens includes sculpture and woodblock prints, both direct in technique, which reflect Storrs’s modernist sensibility. In the 1920s, splitting time between France and the United States, he continued to express aspects of modern life, using sleek metal and stone forms to evoke the urban landscape. His sustained interest in the machine was shared with artists connected to
Dada, including Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, among others. He had his first show in 1920 at Folsom Gallery in New York
and continued to exhibit in Europe and America, including several shows organized by the Societe Anonyme in New York. Storrs’s career flourished and at the end of the twenties, he received several commissions for public sculpture. Storrs continued to produce until his death in 1956.
www.meredithwardfineart.com
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