Louise Kruger
Louise Kruger: Clay and Bronze IN GALLERY II
October 20 – November 23, 2011
Lori Bookstein Fine Art is pleased to present the clay and bronze sculpture of Louise Kruger. This is Kruger’s third one-person exhibition with the gallery, and is dedicated to figurative works created in the 1950s and early 1960s.
While past exhibitions have focused largely on life-size wood works Kruger made throughout her career, her achievement in other mediums is demonstrated in the 19 works here on display. Ranging in size from a four-inch tabletop figurine to a five-foot tall free-standing bronze, the sculptures showcase Kruger's exceptional ability to move fluidly between various scales.
The surfaces of Kruger's works tend to be rough-hewn, often painterly, and her forms may be confoundingly simple. But whether made of clay or bronze, they convey Kruger's deep understanding of anatomy and posture alongside personal associations and intimate narratives. Like an editor of the human body, the artist elides certain features while insistently remarking upon others.
Louise Kruger was born in Los Angeles in 1924. She attended Scripps College in California and the Arts Students League in New York, but three subsequent apprenticeships played a formative role in her arts education: the study of woodworking and joinery, with a ship builder in New Jersey, and traditional metal-working techniques, at foundries in Pistoia, Italy and Kumasi, Ghana. It was during her residency in Pistoia, from 1957–58, that Kruger produced many of the bronze works on exhibit.
Kruger received early recognition for her woodblock prints, turning to sculpture in earnest in 1951. In 1953, she was included in the “New Talent” show at the Museum of Modern Art, and exhibited through the early 1980s at Martha Jackson Gallery, Schoelkopf Gallery, Landmark Gallery, and Condeso/ Lawler Gallery. Kruger’s works are in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the MoMA and the New York Public Library.
“Louise Kruger: Clay and Bronze” will be on exhibit through November 23, 2011. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10:30 to 6. For more information or visual materials, please contact the gallery.