TitleStudy for Eolith
Artist
Isaac Witkin
(American, 1936 - 2006)
Date1993-1994
MediumBronze
DimensionsOverall: 32 × 25 × 8 in.
SignedSigned on lower back, incised: "Isaac W[itkin] / '93 / 1/[3?]"
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, November 13, 1996
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number1996.26
Label TextBorn in Johannesburg, South Africa, Isaac Witkin reluctantly apprenticed with an academic sculptor as a young man only at the urging of his mother. He soon took to it, however, and in 1956 traveled to England to continue his art education, enrolling in St. Martin's School of Art the following year. It was an auspicious time for British sculpture, and Witkin's primary instructor was Anthony Caro, while his fellow students included Barry Flanagan, Philip King, and William Tucker, among others. Between 1961 and 1963, following his graduation from St. Martin's, Witkin worked as assistant to Henry Moore, who, as Witkin put it, would turn out "to be the missing link in my education." Witkin and his contemporaries were experimenting at the time with materials such as fiberglass, aluminum tubing, glass, and plywood, creating polychrome works of high formalist simplicity and elegance. Witkin had his first solo exhibition in 1963 at Rowan Gallery and was included in the seminal exhibitions The New Generation: 1965 at Whitechapel Gallery, London, and Primary Structures: Young American and British Sculptors at the Jewish Museum, New York in 1966. In 1965, Witkin was hired to replace Caro as the sculpture professor at Bennington College, where he would remain until 1979. During the early 1970s, the artist's work took a constructivist turn as he began to weld large geometric pieces of steel, creating complex angular sculptures. In 1978, however, he received a residency at the Johnson Atelier in New Jersey where he considerably expanded his knowledge of bronze casting by learning hollow casting and direct pouring techniques. It was a breakthrough for the artist, after which time he began to work almost exclusively in bronze. Throughout the 1980s Witkin's work became increasingly lyrical in approach, often with references to nature facilitated by various casting methods. By the early 1990s, the sculptor often combined this lyricism with more volumetric shapes and incorporating planar elements with extruded forms.
"Eolith" is the study for the first of only a few stone sculptures Witkin would realize. It was commissioned by collectors Philip and Muriel Berman and first exhibited in 1995 at the outdoor sculpture park Grounds For Sculpture in New Jersey. In many ways, "Eolith" looks back to Witkin's early cast bronze works of the 1980s through its spatial arrangement and substantial mass and form. The work is inherently corporeal, and its tapered composition evokes an emergence from some primordial source. His stone works have been suggested as figure-like metaphors, intimating limbs or a torso. While not a literal representation, the work's title refers to a crude stone tool or artifact. This study in bronze allowed Witkin to work out compositional problems and also served a practical purpose of logistical planning before commencing the final work. The finished version of "Eolith" was realized in Blue Mountain granite at a height of fourteen feet.
MNP
n.d.
1960