Helena Simkhovitch (American, 1903-1993), Torso

patinated cast bronze, signed "HS" to verso, mounted atop a wooden base.
Sculpture 26 1/2 x 9 x 9 in.; including base 30 3/4 x 10 x 9 1/2 in.
Sculptor Helena Simkhovitch was born in New York, studied at the School of Architecture at Columbia University before going to Paris to study sculpture. In Paris, Helena worked at several of the Montparnasse Academies, receiving instruction from Charles Despiau, Aristide Maillot, and Marcel Gimond, among others. However, her earliest influences into portraiture and figural works were memories from the collection of her father, Professor Vladimir Simkhovitch, a distinguished historian, scholar, and collector of ancient arts. While Helena's sculptures do capture a physical likeness to her subjects, she arrives at what is most essential to the character and expression, not seeking to render every detail.
In the 1940s she participated in and organized an exhibition of six female sculptors, called "New York Six" at the Petit Palais in Paris. In the 1950s she exhibited regularly at the Whitney Museum of Art, as well as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In 1955, the Museum of Modern Art organized a traveling exhibition devoted to modern portraiture, in which Helena was the only American artist represented. Other exhibitions included "Women Artists of America, 1707-1964" at the Newark Museum of New Jersey, as well as yearly exhibitions in New York with the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors and the Sculptors Guild. She served as delegate to three congresses of the International Association of Art, in Venice and Yugoslavia.

Literature: Helena Simkhovitch: An Exhibition of Sculpture, 1949-1979, July 10- 31, 1979. The St. Stephen Art Centre, New Brunswick, Canada. (figure 8; "Catalogue" index page).
From the Estate of the Late Helena Simkhovitch, New York and Washington, D.C.
Additional high-resolution photos are available at www.lelandlittle.com

Good estate condition; some light verdigris to crevices and minor marks to base.