Three Graces Morton Dimondstein

Here is one of the "three Graces" series of Sculpture Size Approx. 11" by 15" X 16", add 4" for wood base. Bronze Sulpture dark patina. Statement From Morton Dimondstein Family Trust Page; MORTON DIMONDSTEIN: In his nearly 60-year career as an artist, Morton Dimondstein produced a body of work consisting of prints, woodcuts, paintings, and sculptures. His work has been exhibited in the U.S. and Europe and is represented in public collections, including the Library of Congress, Seattle Art Museum, The World Bank, Pushkin State Museum and in private collections, including those of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Reiner, Mr. Billy Wilder, Mr. and Mrs. Richard Zanuck and Barbra Streisand. The Mexican artist, David Alfaro Siquieros, in an introduction to a folio of Dimondstein's woodcuts created in Mexico in 1954, praised his work as belonging "to the essence of our Mexican movement of art"...that "with evident talent and with great capacity, [he] has reached the human subject." Morton Dimondstein's studies at the American Artists School and the Art Students League in NYC were interrupted by World War II. After the war Dimondstein continued his studies at the Otis Art Institute in LA. After winning a competition for a one-man show at the ACA Gallery in New York, he settled in Mexico City and became a member of the Taller de Grafica Popular and worked as staff artist and instructor in visual education for UNESCO. Widely shown, his woodcuts were used for many book covers as well as in the literary journal, the California Quarterly, for which he served on the editorial board. Dimondstein moved to Rome in 1960, where he shared a studio with sculptor Jack Zajac. Morton exhibited his woodcuts and sculpture extensively in Rome, Milan, and Florence. His work was well received in Italy, where he was represented by Gallery Penelope. Dimondstein returned to LA in 1964 and taught at USC and at the School of Fine Art which he had established with Martin Lubner. He taught not only technique but also the way an artist creates. He continued sculpting and exhibiting at the Felix Landau and other Los Angeles galleries. In addition to painting landscapes, he created portraits in a very large scale and striking in the way they mix painterly values with insight into character. He gave up teaching in 1972 to concentrate on his own art and to pursue his interest in African tribal art, which had begun collecting in the late 1960s. He continued to exhibit his own prints, sculpture, and paintings in one-man shows, the last in 1997 at the Jan Baum Gallery in LA. His most recent works are acrylic on paper-- collage-like, life size and larger than life portraits of friends, family, students, and fellow artists. Using the same technique, he has also reinterpreted traditional themes of western art such as Adam and Eve and The Last Supper. For all the diversity of his subject matter, he never abandoned the figure. Dimondstein was involved in political and social issues, both nationally and internationally. His concerns for social justice were reflected in a number of woodcuts and paintings. He believed that art could effect social change, delivering its message through the power of the aesthetic rather than only the literal content of the piece. Morton Dimondstein died November 27, 1990 at the age of 80 after a prolonged struggle with Parkinson's disease.