A – G

Karl Gruppe

1893-1982

Theme/Style – Figural sculpture, portrait busts, medals, decorative arts

Media – Bronze, marble, plaster

Artistic Focus – An academic sculptor who worked mainly in marble and bronze, Karl Gruppe was best known for his bronze medals and portrait busts of personalities such as Charles Lindbergh, working in a style combining free-form Beaux-Arts naturalism with his own more refined and subtle craftsmanship.

Career Highlights –

Karl Heinrich Gruppe was born in Rochester, New York in 1893. The son of painter Charles Paul Gruppe (1860-1940) and brother of landscape painter Emil Gruppe (1896-1978), he was raised in the Netherlands, and at the age of 12 his father enrolled him at the Royal Academy in Antwerp, Belgium where he studied with sculptor Frans Joris.
His family moved back to the U.S. in 1909, where in New York City Gruppe became the assistant to the sculptor Herbert Adams and enrolled at the Art Students League.
At the Art Students League, Gruppe was chosen to be studio assistant to the influential sculptor Karl Bitter, who invited him to model the finial statues for the Italian Towers at San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915.
In the wake of Bitter’s untimely death that same year, Gruppe assumed the task of making an enlarged replica of Bitter’s figure of Pomona for the Pulitzer Memorial Fountain in Manhattan’s Grand Army Plaza; and in 1916, Gruppe exhibited in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Annual Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture.
After serving in World War I, Gruppe returned to New York where he worked for the sculptor Charles Cary Rumsey, and gained a reputation in his own right by winning the Avery Prize at the New York Architectural League in 1920 and exhibiting with the National Sculpture Society in 1923.
Gruppe joined the New York City Department of Parks’ Monument Restoration Project under the auspices of the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP). Gruppe acted as their chief sculptor from 1934 to 1937, overseeing a committee of sculptors who worked to restore monuments and fountains throughout the city.
In 1938, Gruppe was charged with executing the late Karl Bitter’s design for the 16-foot statue atop the Henry Hudson Memorial Column in the Bronx.
During the late 1930s Gruppe created medals for the New York City Department of Parks, and from the 1940s through the early 1980s, Gruppe created numerous Presidential Medals for the New York Numismatic Club.
Gruppe was among the final group of artists elected to the Life Membership category of the National Arts Club in 1950, and he designed the group’s Medal of Honor in 1951. He served as President of the National Sculpture Society in 1949 and 1960, and as Vice President of the National Academy of Design in 1957.
In 1968 Gruppe won the National Sculpture Society’s Lindsey Morris Prize, and in 1970 his sculpture of Dwight D. Eisenhower won the Bronze Medal for Sculpture at the National Arts Club’s annual exhibition.
In 1980, Gruppe was awarded the National Sculpture Society’s “Special Medal of Honor” for his “notable achievement in, and for encouragement to American Sculpture.”
Gruppe’s medals are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Numismatic Society, New York; the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; and the Cleveland Museum of Art, OH, among others.
Karl Gruppe passed away in Southold, New York in 1982.

Selection of Works by this Artist

Building Toward Unity – Youth of the Scout World

Marcel André Bouraine

1886-1948

Theme/Style – Art Deco, Realism, human figure, mythological figures and animals

Media – Bronze, glass, ivory, ceramic, and metal sculpture

Artistic Focus – Although Marcel André Bouraine’s classical bronze figures are his best known, he also created chryselephantine (bronze and ivory) statuettes and ceramic pieces. He also often used the pseudonyms “Marcel André Derenne” and “Briand” for his non-bronze metal pieces.

Career Highlights –

Marcel André Bouraine was born in Pontoise, France in 1886. Largely self-taught, Bouraine was briefly a pupil of sculptor Alexandre Falguière, who emphasized realism in 19th-century sculpture.
Bouraine was taken prisoner by the Germans during World War I and was interned in Switzerland. His talent interested the German soldiers, and while in Switzerland he produced several monuments, including one for the city of Lausanne. He later studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva and executed the tomb for deceased interned French soldiers there in 1920.
During the 1920s Bouraine exhibited in Paris at the Salon des Tuileries (1922), the Salon d’Automne, the Salon des Indépendants, and the Société des Artistes Français.
Bouraine also designed smaller sculptures for several French foundries including Susse Frères, Edmond Etling, and Arthur Goldscheider; and he often exhibited with the artist groups La Stèle, which was primarily modern sculpture, and L’Evolution, which was focused on decorative arts.
Bouraine participated in the sculpture category of the art competition at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris.
In 1928 the sculptor and glass artist Gabriel Argy-Rousseau commissioned a number of figurines from Bouraine, including female nudes, a fountain and an illuminated group in colored, translucent pâte de verre glass.
During the 1920s and 1930s Bouraine created some of the most quintessential Art Deco sculptures of the period, including “Amazone” and his series of “Diana” and “Danseuse” figures.
Bouraine was also a lifelong friend of sculptors Max Le Verrier and Pierre le Faguays, two of his fellow students in Geneva, and the Le Verrier foundry produced many of Bouraine’s statues.
In 1935 the city of Paris purchased a terra cotta bust from Bouraine, and in 1937 Bouraine executed two major commissions for Paris’s Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne, including a large sculpture for the Palace of the Ceramics of Sèvres.
During World War II Bouraine’s production slowed. While living in Biot in the French Alps, he sculpted pipe heads sold under the brand name “OPTIM.” Marcel André Bouraine passed away in France in 1948.

Selection of Works by this Artist

Amazone

Anonymous

Greek Runner

(European, Late 19th c. / Early 20th c.)

Sculptural depictions of this classic figure of a runner originate in Greece, from the 4th century B.C. A large example is on the island of Corfu, in the garden of the Achilleion, the summer palace of the Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Two Roman replicas of the sculpture dating to the 1st century B.C. were found in the Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum, and are now in the collection of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli. Some small-scale reproductions of the sculpture bear a foundry mark from Fonderia Sommer in Naples, a manufacturer active between 1860 and 1920.

Artwork Detail

Greek Runner

Jean de Roncourt

(active 1920s-1930s)

Theme/Style – Modernism, Art Deco, figurative art

Media – Bronze, spelter

Artistic Focus – Jean de Roncourt was a French master sculptor of masculine, athletic figures, who was active in the 1920s and 1930s. It was quite typical for sculptors to use pseudonyms in the Art Deco period, and to produce work using two or three different names; and since virtually no information is available regarding de Roncourt’s life and career, some researchers believe that the name could be a pseudonym used by either of the Art Deco sculptors Demétre Chiparus (1886-1947) or Ugo Cipriani (1887-1960). It is also believed that sculptures by de Roncourt were produced under the pseudonyms “G. Hervor” and “J. Rudens.”

Selection of Works by this Artist

Les Haleurs

Randal Borough

1878-1951

Theme/Style – Figurative work, portraiture, landscape, illustration, posters, cartoons, interior design

Media – Oils, pastels, ink and pencil drawings, etchings

Artistic Focus – Randal Borough was a skilled artist and illustrator whose work as a magazine and poster artist captured the sunny exuberance of early 1900s California. He was also a noted portraitist, whose work in this genre was most appreciated later in his life, after his long and successful career in advertising art.

Career Highlights –

Randal (sometimes spelled “Randall”) William Borough was born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1878.
By 1900 he was living in San Francisco and studying at the city’s Mark Hopkins Institute of Art.
He also attended Stanford University, graduating with a degree in Drawing in 1904, and was staff illustrator for the San Francisco Call newspaper.
Soon after the San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906, Borough moved to Los Angeles and exhibited with the city’s Painters Club that same year.
During his time in Los Angeles, Borough wrote about art for the Los Angeles Record, and became a successful illustrator for the Saturday Evening Post, Sunset, Pacific Empire, and other magazines. Borough was to continue illustrating for Sunset magazine through the early 1900s.
By 1909 Borough seems to have returned to San Francisco, and early that year it was announced that the city would have a grand celebration called the Portola Festival, to celebrate the 140th anniversary of the 1769 discovery of San Francisco Bay by Juan Gaspar de Portolá, who became California’s first governor.
A competition was held to choose the design of the official Portola Festival poster using the likeness of Virgilia Bogue, who had been chosen the festival’s queen. The winner of the contest was Randal Borough, whose poster depicted a joyful, dancing Ms. Bogue among a shower of roses. The image was also used on a postcard for the festival.
Also in 1909, Borough was included in the annual newspaper artists’ exhibition at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco; and in 1911 he designed a poster for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
A member of San Francisco’s Bohemian Club, Borough exhibited under their auspices and participated in their stage productions, and in 1912 he was one of the interior designers for the San Francisco home of the Southern Club.
In 1915 Borough married Florence Burns, the daughter of the famous private investigator William J. Burns, known as “America’s Sherlock Holmes.” By 1920, Borough and his family had relocated to New York City, where he worked as an advertising artist for the Thomas F. Logan agency (later Lord & Thomas and Logan).
In 1939 Borough, who had continued to paint in his spare time, had his first New York exhibit, which included portraits of his wife and daughter. The success of this show led him to retire from advertising and concentrate on portraiture, moving to his home and studio in Orwell, Vermont in 1942.
Borough exhibited with the Mid-Vermont Artists in 1945, and in 1946 his portrait of former Vermont Governor William H. Wills was placed in Vermont’s Capitol Building in Montpelier.
Randal Borough passed away while vacationing in Sarasota, Florida in 1951.

Selection of Works by this Artist

Portola Festival – 1909 – San Francisco

Miguel Covarrubias

1904-1957

Theme/Style – Modernism, figurative art, illustration, political cartoons and caricatures

Media – Oils, gouache, watercolor, lithography

Artistic Focus – Miguel Covarrubias, revered in Mexico as one of the country’s most important 20th-century artists as well as one of a small group of Mexican artists who were well-known in the U.S. during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, had a unique artistic sensibility that was informed by his passionate interest in ethnography, archaeology, and cultural diversity. A master of color technique and the use of gouache, Covarrubias created dramatic figurative works as well as murals, illustrations, and sophisticated political caricatures; and as a dedicated humanist he made important contributions to anthropological history through his scholarly written work.

Career Highlights –

Born José Miguel Covarrubias Duclaud in Mexico City in 1904, Miguel Covarrubias attended the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, and after graduating at the age of 14 he started producing caricatures and illustrations for the Mexican Ministry of Public Education, and also drew maps for his father, who was a civil engineer.
Covarrubias moved to New York City at the age of 19 on a grant from the Mexican government, and was welcomed into the city’s literary and cultural elite (known as the “Smart Set”) as he soon gained recognition as an illustrator for Vogue, the New Yorker, and Vanity Fair. Inspired by the Harlem Renaissance, Covarrubias’s Art Deco-like caricatures and depictions of musical night spots helped define the Jazz Age, and brought black culture into mainstream American consciousness.
He also designed sets and costumes for the theater, including La Revue Negre starring Josephine Baker, and illustrated works by Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and W.C. Handy, among others.
Covarrubias and dancer/choreographer Rosa Rolanda became a couple, and traveled together extensively in the mid to late 1920s, including a trip to Mexico with Tina Modotti and Edward Weston, where they visited with Covarrubias’s close friend Diego Rivera, and Weston taught Rosa photography.
In 1931, Covarrubias exhibited paintings at the Valentine Gallery in New York and drawings with Peter Arno at Gump’s Gallery in San Francisco.
Covarrubias’s growing interest in cultural anthropology took him and Rosa, now married, to Bali; and again accompanied by Rosa, Covarrubias returned to Southeast Asia in 1933 as a Guggenheim fellow. His research of the Balinese culture resulted in his acclaimed book Island of Bali, published in 1937, which was illustrated with his artworks and Rosa’s photographs.
He exhibited in a print show with the American Artists Group at the Weyhe Gallery in New York in 1936, along with Conrad Buff, Ernest Fiene, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, and others.
Covarrubias painted six murals for the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition (GGIE) in San Francisco, collectively titled “The Pageant of the Pacific.” Displayed in the exposition’s Pacific House, the murals were detailed maps depicting native life in the Pacific Basin. Reproduction prints of the murals were issued in a portfolio, and are said to have had the largest sale of any fine art prints in America to that date. In 1943 the original mural panels were deposited on loan at the Museum of Natural History in New York.
Covarrubias returned to Mexico City in the early 1940s, where he continued to paint, illustrate and write, publishing Mexico South: The Isthmus of Tehuantepec in 1946 and The Eagle, the Jaguar, and the Serpent: Indian Art of the Americas in 1954. His home, Tizapán, would become a hub for visitors from around the world, including Dolores del Rio and Nelson Rockefeller.
Covarrubias became an expert on the ancient Olmec civilization, taught ethnology at the Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, and was appointed artistic director at the Palacio de Bellas Artes, where his focus was the research and preservation of traditional Mexican dance forms.
Miguel Covarrubias passed away in Mexico City in 1957. In 1959 his GGIE mural panels were donated to San Francisco’s World Trade Club by the trustees of Pacific House. Five mural panels were restored and installed in the city’s Ferry Building (the sixth panel’s whereabouts are unknown); but in 2001 they were again put into storage when the space was renovated. In 2006 the murals were loaned to Mexico City’s National Museum of Anthropology and other venues, and on their return to San Francisco one panel entitled “The Fauna and Flora of the Pacific” was placed on extended loan with the de Young Museum in 2008.

Selection of Works by this Artist

Pacific House – 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition