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DIRECT SCULPTURE BY CORNELIA CHAPIN

One Man Show by American Artist, Pupil of Hernandez at Fifteen Gallery

New York, April 2-Cornelia Van A. Chapin, American sculptor (her father was Lindley Hoffman Chapin; her great-grandfather was Chester W. Chapin), will present her first New York one-man exhibition of her sculpture carved direct from life at the Fifteen gallery, 37 West 57th street, from next Tuesday through Saturday, the 16th. Miss Chapin exhibited in Paris last year both individually and with her master, the Spanish sculptor, Mateo Hernandez.

Miss Chapin was born in Waterford, Ct., and studied in New York, modeling under a variety of teachers. That modeling was done with certain mental reservations on her part as sculpture always meant, to her, cutting away in stone rather than building up in soft material. In Paris, in 1934, she had the good fortune to be accepted as pupil by Hernandez, who had recreated for himself in the mountain fastnesses of Spain the art of the ancients, carving direct from life in stone with no making of models to copy before hand, and no casts of the original piece permitted afterward.

"One spends long hours of contemplation of the living model before touching one's block of granite or marble," Miss Chapin says, "then cuts, painstakingly and directly into the stone, the work all done by hand, from the first roughing out to the final polishing. While the greater part of my work is of animal figures in the round, I also cut nudes and portraits in a variety of media, many of them almost in the Egyptian manner of cutting all the form in what appears to be one plane."

It has been said of Miss Chapin: "Working in a variety of stone and wood she has achieved strength and repose by a simplification which emphasizes the essential character of each individual type she sets out to portray. Her animal figures have each a distinct personality. Her work has a human warmth, clarity, humor and an inate [[innate]] feeling for design in which we recognize a quality of timely beauty and strength."

The exhibition at the Fifteen gallery will include "Young Elephant," carved directly from life in an African tree (aloyous), which was awarded the second Anna Hyatt Huntington prize for sculpture at the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors in 1936; and the group of three animals, "Pelican-in-repose," carved direct in Greek marbel [[marble]]; "Tortoise," carved direct in Volcanic rock; and "Penguin," carved directly in black granite, which were shown in the United States pavilion at the Paris International Exposition of Art and Technic of 1937 and recommended for a second grand prize, class of stone sculpture, by the international jury representing 45 nations.

Besides belonging to the Fifteen gallery group, Miss Chapin is a member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, and the National Arts club, and was elected "societaire" of the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1936, the only foreign and the only woman sculptor elected that year. Since 1930, Miss Chapin has shown at the National Academy of Design, the Municipal Art gallery, the Pennsylvania academy, the Freund gallery, etc., as well as the Salon des Tuileries and the Salon d'Automne in Paris.