Jose De Creeft (Spanish, 1884-1982), Standing Woman

Patinated bronze, signed in the casting to the lower side, mounted upon a tiered stone base.

20 in.

From the Estate of the late Joel Hasen, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Modernist sculptor, Jose De Creeft was born in Guadalajara, Spain in 1884. After completing an apprenticeship to a maker of religious images, Jose travelled to Paris in 1905 to pursue sculpture at the Académie Julian, and attended the Maison Greber.

Respected in academic circles, De Creeft was commissioned in 1918 to sculpt a granite war memorial in Saugues (Puy de Dome) dedicated to the French foot soldier, "Le Poilu." In 1925, and for a short time after, he experimented with assemblage techniques. From 1927 to 1929, he created two hundred stone carvings for Roberto Romonje's Forteleza in Majorca, Spain. De Creeft began exhibiting regularly in modernist exhibitions such as the Salon d'Automne between 1919-28.

He emigrated to America in 1929 and had his first solo exhibition at Ferargil Galleries in New York. In styles ranging from Art Moderne to Expressionism, he projected an opulence of gesture. De Creeft also taught sculpture in New York City at the New School of Social Research, 1932-39; the Art Students League, 1944-48; and Black Mountain College, the summer of 1944. De Creeft earned United States citizenship in 1940. In 1951, Jose De Creeft sculpted the Poet for Philadelphia's Fairmount Park Association.

De Creeft once said, "Sculpture is the creation of three-dimensional form in space. In my opinion, the most fundamental principle required to obtain that end is the use of massive volume and contour. I cannot believe that sculpture is a mechanical toy, a feat of engineering, or a series of spaces in material."

Stone base with areas of loss and associated loose mounting; bronze crevices with some light surface dust.