Biography

Tony Rosenthal, the International Artist, renowned for his Abstract Public Art Sculptures, now 93, continues to create Sculptures that match the vitality of Works the Artist has created over the last five decades. Tony Rosenthal has recently completed a series of masterful Abstract Wood and Metal Wall Sculptures. In Rosenthal’s Wall Sculptures, the Artist has created a metaphor of "writing on the wall"; flat, hard-edged shapes, contrasting suggestions of the organic, all parts of design, shape and organization; the marriage of the hard edge and soothing curves. For example, in "Untitled" ("Two Blue Stripes"), 2007, the yellow shape resembles the profile of a woman's body, while the curved black shape looks like her rear silhouette. Rosenthal presents contrasting shapes within the confines of a geometric circle.

Rosenthal began his career creating Figurative Sculpture, and won wide acclaim. For the last five decades, Tony Rosenthal has created Abstract Sculpture that explores the Geometric Form, i.e., Cube, Circle, Square. Tony Rosenthal’s Cube Sculptures are like a city, intelligent formation with secrets, hiding, balancing and finding in limitations all the possibilities of a mixed society. Within a Cube, we see other shapes, planes, exposed creating steps or stairs, like a mountain difficult to climb. But climb we do, because it is the invention of clean geometry that makes man other than nature. It is our will.

Rosenthal’s Rings, Discs and Rondos, is another important series of Works that Rosenthal has explored over the past five decades. Rosenthal's Circle Sculptures react to the invasion of their environment, so that the Sculpture itself becomes a frame, with which to see the environment through. Being framed by the romance of a point of view, the feeling of movement, the reverberation of movement, we see the vigor from the choices that are commanded by Rosenthal’s Sculpture. Tony Rosenthal finds, discovers and reports to us what we might not have seen without him.

Best known for his large Public Art Sculptures, Tony Rosenthal creates Sculptures in a variety of mediums, including Wood, Aluminum, Cor-Ten Steel; sizes, from Maquettes of a few inches to Monumental Outdoor Sculpture of several hundred feet. Instantly recognizable and seen by millions every year, Rosenthal's Sculptures are better known by their shape and landmark appearance. Edward Albee, the Pulitzer Prize Winning Playwright, said it best in his introduction to Sam Hunter's Book "Tony Rosenthal," Rizzoli, 1999, "Tony Rosenthal goes to his studio every day, wrenches steel, bends aluminum, cuts and bolts, fashions and refines. He is both artisan and artist, rendering conscious that which his creative instinct insists upon."

Mr. Albee further writes, "Tony works in all sizes. His monumental outdoor pieces, set in landscapes or in busy city spaces, seem always to have been there. His more intimate wall sculptures and standing forms have a monumentality no matter what their actual size." "Like all the important metal workers - like Stankiewicz, like Caro, like Serra, like Chamberlain - Rosenthal's objects instruct us, alter our perceptions, disturb and thrill us by their audacity, their wonder and their inevitability."

It can be said that Tony Rosenthal's Sculpture presents the solutions for complexity finding order; sometimes it feels like tackling a problem, sometimes the appeal is emotional like the gestures of a dance or survival. But Rosenthal Sculptures always revel in the element of discovery, finding his way through arrangements of line and space like the strong power and strength of a candid camera moment, expressing the fleeting excitement of process, remaining because a sculptural rendition is created. Rosenthal allows us to look at remembrance, recalling life as it was, or what we desire that it may be.

Rosenthal's "Alamo", the Monumental 15 Foot Cor-Ten Steel Sculpture is internationally known as the "Astor Place Cube". So famous is this landmark Sculpture that it was provided as the final visual clue on the CBS Season 10 Amazing Race Season Finale (12/10/06; Episode 13), underscoring that Rosenthal's Sculptures are instantly recognizable and more well known by shape than name.

Born Bernard Rosenthal in 1914 Highland Park, Illinois, Tony Rosenthal earned a B.F.A. from the University of Michigan and from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Sam Kootz, the legendary Art Dealer persuaded Mr. Rosenthal to use his nickname, "Tony", and since 1960, the Artist has been professionally known and credited as Tony Rosenthal. Now Rosenthal prefers the Tony Rosenthal credit for all Works of Art he has created over the last 7 decades.

Sam Hunter, Professor and Art Critic has named Rosenthal a "Public Art Legend". According to the Smithsonian Institution, which catalogues Sculpture located in United States Museums and Public Art Sites, Rosenthal has more Sculptures in Museums and Public places than Anthony Caro, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Serra, Richard Stankiewicz and Frank Stella.

Sculptures by Rosenthal are included in the Collections of Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk Virginia; City of New York; Fashion Institute of Technology, New York; Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Museum of American Art: Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. (Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Collection); The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut. Rosenthal Works are also included in many Corporate and Private Collections.

While "Alamo" is the most well known Rosenthal Sculpture, the Artist has created a long list of successful Public Sculptures that date back to 1939, when "Nubian Slave" was installed at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Other famous and now iconic projects include the Artist's "Rondo", the elegantly highly polished Bronze Disc, installed on 59th Street off Park Avenue in 1969; "5 in 1" the 35 Foot Massive Cor-Ten Steel Sculpture of Interlocking Discs, installed at 1 Police Plaza in New York City.

Additional Sculptures include "JS Bach Variation #9", 1990, at the Ravina Music Festival Park, Illinois; "Pass-Thru", 1988, Hofstra University; Big Six, 1975, a 10' Structural Steel Work at The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia; Odyssey I, 1967, a Large Red Painted Steel Sculpture at the Open Air Museum of Sculpture, Antwerp, Belgium and "Hammarskjold", 1977, the 20 Foot Structural Steel Work at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Since 1940, Tony Rosenthal has had numerous Solo and Group Exhibitions. Mr. Rosenthal has had a distinguished association with preeminent Art Dealers; from 1961-66, Tony Rosenthal had Solo Exhibitions at the prestigious Kootz Gallery, New York. When Mr. Kootz retired in 1966, Rosenthal exhibited at M. Knoedler & Co., Inc., New York, and in 1988, began exhibiting with Galerie Denise Rene, Paris. Rosenthal also had Solo Exhibitions at Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York and Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York.

In addition, Rosenthal Sculptures have been included in hundreds of Group Exhibitions; currently, Rosenthal is included in the National Academy, New York, Museum Exhibition titled, "The Abstract Impulse: Fifty Years of Abstraction at the National Academy, 1956-2006". Beginning in October, 2007, Rosenthal will be included in the Margulies Collection At The Warehouse, Miami, Florida, Exhibition "Sculpture: 1940 thru the Present - Selections from the private collection of Martin Z. Margulies". The Exhibition also includes William DeKooning, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Joan Miro, Isamu Noguchi, George Segal, Richard Serra, Tony Smith.

 
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