Mary Callery

Mary Callery
Callery in 1952
Born	June 19, 1903(1903-06-19) New York City, USA
Died	February 12, 1977 Paris, France
Nationality	American
Field	Sculpture
Movement	Abstract expressionism; American Figurative Expressionism

Mary Callery (1903 – 1977) was an American artist known for her Modern and Abstract Expressionist sculpture. She was part of the New York School art movement of the 1940s, '50s and '60s.

It is said she "wove linear figures of acrobats and dancers, as slim as spaghetti and as flexible as India rubber, into openwork bronze and steel forms. A friend of Picasso, she was one of those who brought the good word of French modernism to America at the start of World War II".^[1]

Biography

Mary Callery was born June 19, 1903 in New York City. She was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.^[2] She was the daughter of James Dawson Callery, president of the Diamond National Bank, and his wife Julia Welch Callery. In 1923, she married Frederic R. Coudert Jr., and with him had a daughter, Caroline, born in 1926. She sought a divorce from Coudert in 1930 and in 1931 married Carlo Frua de Angeli. This second marriage ended in divorce, also. From 1930 to 1940 she worked in France, where she met and became friends with Pablo Picasso^[3], Henri Matisse, and Fernand Léger. Back in the United States, she became friends with Georgia O'Keeffe and in 1945 made a sculpture of O'Keeffe's head. She returned to Paris from time to time after the war and died in 1977 in the American Hospital, Paris, France.

Studies

Mary Callery studied at the Art Students League of New York (1921–1925) with Edward McCartan and privately in Paris with Jacques Loutchansky. She resided in Paris part of each year.^[4][5]

Teaching positions

• Black Mountain College, near Asheville, North Carolina.

Solo exhibitions

• 1944, 1947, 1950, 1952, 1955: Buchholz Gallery, New York City
• 1946: Arts Club of Chicago
• 1947, 1949, 1950–1952, 1955: Curt Valentin Gallery, New York City
• 1949: Salon du Mai, Paris
• 1951: Margaret Brown Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
• 1954: Galerie des Cahiers d'Art
• 1957, 1961, 1965: M. Knoedler & Co., New York City
• 1962: M. Knoedler & Co., Paris
• 1968: C. Holland Gallery, New York

Group exhibitions

• 1939: Salon des Tuileries, Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, NYC; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC; The Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
• 1946: The City Art Museum of St. Louis, Missouri
• 1949: 3rd Sculpture International at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
• 1956: Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, New York
• 1958: Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas; Brussels World's Fair

Collections

• The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut
• Phillips Academy, Addison Gallery of American Art - Andover, Massachusetts
• CIT Corporation
• The Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio
• The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan
• Eastland Shopping Center, Detroit
• The Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
• The Museum of Modern Art, New York City
• New York University, New York City
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California
• Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio
• The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City
• The Metropolitan Opera House, New York City

References

Bibliography

• John I. H. Baur, Revolution and Tradition in modern American Art, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1951
• Ulrich Gertz, Contemporary plastic art, Berlin, Rembrandt-Verlag, 1955
• Carola Giedion-Welcker, Contemporary sculpture, an evolution in volume and space, New York, G. Wittenborn, 1961, ©1960
• Fred Licht, Sculpture, 19th & 20th centuries, Greenwich, Connecticut, New York Graphic Society, 1967
• E.H. Ramsden, Sculpture: theme and variations, towards a contemporary aesthetic, London, Lund, Humphries, 1953
• Herbert Read, A concise history of modern sculpture, New York, Praeger, 1964 ISBN 0-19-519941-3, ISBN 978-0-19-519941-3
• Andrew Carnduff Ritchie, Sculpture of the twentieth century (exhibition catalogue), New York: Museum of Modern Art, ©1952
• Michel Seuphor, The sculpture of the century: dictionary of modern sculpture, Zwemmer, 1960
• Eduard Trier, Form and space; sculpture of the twentieth century, New York, Praeger, 1962
• Philip R. Adams, Mary Callery Sculpture. Distributed by Wittenborn and Company, New York, 1961
• Marika Herskovic, American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4

External links for image reproduction

• Mary Callery biography from askart.com (with image of Acrobats with Birds)
• Smithsonian Institution Research Information System; Archival, Manuscript and Photographic Collections, Mary Callery
• Life Images: Mary Callery
• Metropolitan Museum of Art database
• National Gallery of Art, Washington
• Addison Gallery of American Art
• Indianapolis Museum of Art