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Peter Agostini (1913-1993) was a major American sculptor, credited as a Pop art pioneer of the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg. Associated with several New York School artists, including Franz Kline, Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning and David Smith, Agostini did not classify himself as Pop. He also "never abandoned the traditional subjects of sculpture like the human head and figure, and particularly the horse."
Frequently praised for his "extremely beautiful and often original" work, Agostini's identity as an artist was long considered a "puzzle." ARTnews editor Thomas B. Hess rebutted that opinion by noting that Agostini was “an artist with many arrows to his bow who is working in a period that likes the monolithic shaft.” Judith E. Stein in Art in America concurred, writing that "Agostini has always been his own man, an artist whose concern for pure esthetic values has never impeded his search for new sculptural forms or new techniques to achieve them."
In a 1975 review, the New York Times praised Agostini without reservation, describing him as "an artist who combines imagination, ability and humor in his plaster, bronze and terra cotta works," before explaining that:
Although his shapes may bulge, pinch or even atrophy, they assertively suggest the human condition, including its strengths and frailties and its virtues and vices. The works synthesize both a world of reality and one of fantasy, shuttling freely between the two.Largely self-taught, Agostini's early influences included both Elie Nadelman and Alberto Giacometti, but the work he is best known for is characterized by a surreal, even humorous idiosyncratic style that molded 'Found object,' from "'frozen life' pieces, such as clotheslines, pillows, and squeezed inner tubes as well as work that suggested more turbulent themes, such as hurricanes and 'action horses' in plaster. Describing his own work, Agostini emphasized feeling over form:The sculptor is a protean talent, allowing his objects to assume many forms and to follow multiple stylistic directions. But for all the differences in the various sculptures, his hand is eminently recognizable.
That is the prime thing—to generate “up”—leverage, elevation. The balloons rising, clothes on a line being picked up by the wind. The same with my horses. Whatever use they are, my horses are about flight, bursting out.
In 1959, Agostini held his first one-man show at the Galerie Grimaud. In 1960, he began showing at the Stephen Radich Gallery and, over the next few years, was celebrated by Time and ArtNews and participated in the 1964 World’s Fair exhibition, alongside Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Mallary." That same year, Agostini was also a recipient of a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. In 1990, Agostini was elected a full member of the National Academy of Design. His work would go on to be exhibited in four Whitney Biennial shows and, by the end of his career, he had participated in 25 solo shows and more than 100 group shows world-wide.
Agostini taught sculpture and painting at multiple institutions, including the New York Studio School, Columbia University, the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and the Parsons School of Design. Watercolorist Ellen Murray studied with Agostini.
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