John Storrs

See also:  [Sculpture]
           [Cubism]

Excellent biog link:  -[TurnersCross.com]-

John Storrs


Stuff

As the author of the text on the Sculpture of the Sheldon
Memorial -[here]- (Valerie Cargbberry Gallery)
points out, 

  Storrs first visited Paris in 1906, beginning his 
  art studies. In 1912, he returne to continue those
  pursuits, which in the interim had taken him to 
  various schools in the USA and Germany; the following
  year he gegan studying with the influential Augste Rodin.
  ...
  Ultimately, France became his expatriate home, and as 
  a result, Storr's radical abstractins of the late
  1910's had later exerted little influence on his
  contemporaries in the USA, where they remained  largely
  unknown until introduced in post-humous exhibitions in
  the 1960's.   [P. 31]

However, i might go out on a limb and say that the "geometrical
architecture" which he independently invented, is *probably* 
built on the idea of the skyscrapers - which he would have 
surely seen on his visits to the USA as well as the trend 
which was at least "in the wind"; viz, Franz Kupka and of 
course the Russian Construkivist schools, etc. 

What i think most strikes me is not his use of the sky-scraper
form as such, but the inter-mixing of planes of COLOUR which 
were hinted at by Malevich (who continued to study them in
the 2d world). These same "planes of cut colour" would surface
in the 1900c with the works of Ferdinand Leger, and of course
continuations of the cubist movement. 

For me this is an important point: The surface of an object
(take a monolith or an obelesque) are just that to the sculptor
and/or drawer,etc. But, on such surfaces in our real world, 
many things *live* on these surfaces. This re-kindles the
infinite circles within circles idea that what if our whole 
galaxy is simply an atom in a much bigger universe. This idea
again struck home, when i learned of the necessity of removng
*etched* finger prints from polished metal surfaces in the
restoration of one of Storr's work  -[SW or WW ref]
  

Images

  
  Much more "in-the-round"and more maximal
  than many of his simpler, minimalist works.

  Whether "read" as portrait in the cubist fashion,
  or as intersecting planes of built-up decomposition...

He (like Caulder) seemd that to suggest a fold in the
surface - one captured/released the space of the 
di-hedral angles within (and i would add: without).

Chronology



Important Works

  Joan of Arc

  Walt Whitman