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N.Y. Times April 10 A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK Brief Comment on Some of the Recently Opened Exhibitions in the Galleries By HOWARD DEVREE FOUR interesting exhibitions of work by sculptors figured in the attractions opening last week and still current. One of these was work by an American women; another, of word by one of our foremost ceramists; a third, by a Scandinavian sculptor already known in our museums and galleries, and the fourth, of drawings and photographs of monumental work by a Russian. The first of these four artists is Cornelia Van A. Chapin, whose show at the Fifteen Gallery is sponsored in a foreword by Mateo Hernandez. "She has had the daring, the energy, the discipline to practice the technique of direct carving from life in blocks of hard stone and wood." These pieces are no cut and dried representationalisms: there is humor in her resting pelican; there is a jocose dignity in her elephant, and her huge granite frog would dominate fittingly the damp end of a stream fed garden. Some of the low reliefs, notably the nude in red sandstone, reveal, moreover, the artist's sense of linear balance. Directness and simplicity pleasingly characterize her work. Rusell Barnett Aitken, who is showing recent work at the Walker Gallery, needs no introduction to American sculptures, two punch bowls strikingly decorated and a series of attractive service plates, "Adventures of a Fawn." Some of the enamels, particularly the polo and hockey plaques, are among his most colorful work. The work of Frederick Hammergren, now on view at the Douthitt Gallery, includes pieces on loan from the Brooklyn Museum and other public and private collections. The artist is described as specializing in patriotic and memorial statues; but some of the small pieces currently shown are arresting bits of sensitive decoration. Hammargren belongs rather to the eclectics than the individualists, and essentially to the decorative division of sculptors. "Enigma," a somewhat Florentine portrait in marble; "Oriental," in mahogany; and the torso in marble from the Brooklyn Museum might very well be singled out from the show. N.Y. Sun. (UPTON) Animals and birds are the chief concern of Cornelia Van A. Chapin, who is exhibiting her sculptures at the Fifteen Gallery, 37 Est Fifty-seventh street. She works directly in the stone, keeping her planes large and simple and reducing form to the lowest elements consistent with naturalistic representation. The result is to give her smallest things, such as her "Guinea Pig," "Pelican in Repose" and "Young Pig" a certain largeness of expression that is very comforting to the conservative eye, too accustomed to the fussiness of detail, or violent movement and wilful, and generally meaningless, distortion of so much contemporary sculpture here-abouts. It may not be great sculpture, but is at least in the tradition of the great. A number of low reliefs, including in addition to animal subjects, a nude and a portrait, and a number of drawings and wood engravings round out an interesting and individual display, which continues on view until April, 16. N.Y. Post. (Klein) It's a very friendly, sociable looking group of animals that Cornelia A. Chapin has carved directly from life and put on exhibition at the Fifteen Gallery. There are the elephant, the Belgian hare, bear cub, young pig, tortoise, penguin and others, all in placid attitude. Miss Chapin is a much at home with the various materials she uses as with her models. It is an attractive, intimate display. N.Y. Tribune (Burroughs) Animal Sculptures The essential quality of the individual type is shown in the animal sculptures with Cornelia Van A. Chapin. New York artist and former pupil of Mateo Hernandez, is exhibiting at the Fifteen Gallery. Working in taille direct Miss Chapin carves with excellent restraint reposeful figures of a young elephant, frogs, a penguin and a guinea pig, from blocks of stone or wood, and adds to sound technique a discreet taste for line. The results, especially that of the large "Panther Frog," in dark granite, are so stylized as to stand up almost monumentally. World Telegram April 9. 1938 Art Shown by Women By Emily Genauer. Women figure in several art presentations of the week, but that doesn't mean there's anything essentially feminine about their work. Delicacy and fragility, for example, are two words that have absolutely nothing to do with the sculptures of Cornelia Van A. Chapin, on view at the Fifteen Galleries. In the first place, when Mrs. Chapin carves an elephant it's no child's-toy affair, nor any decoration for a what-not. The young elephant in her current show is a colossal figure cut directly in volcanic rock and almost life-size. We've seen baby elephants at the circus no bigger than this. The artist carves her work directly into her materials, rather than confining her own efforts to deft modelling and letting the casters and stone cutters do the actual work on her figures, because she believes it a more valid means of expression. The great Egyptian and Chaldean stone sculptures and bas-reliefs were cut so, and so, too, were those of the Chinese, Indo-Chinese and Japanese people. Direct carving, she feels, as do most modern sculptors, permits of greatest emotional intensity. Essential Form Important. Naturally essential form in such work is more important than mere decorative detail. The degree of the artist's skill may be determined from the purity of the form and the amount of emotion she instills into or-perhaps it is better to say, extracts from the crude material. She does succeed in giving her elephant a certain dignity, and her guinea pig an air of alertness. But too many of the other works are solid and expressionless. They remain just great lumps of material cut away into more or less realistic forms that have no essential character. And the low reliefs are disappointing. The critic does run out of adjectives. Scribbled alongside her "Study of Hands," as it is listed in the catalogue, we find a little pencilled notation reading, "So what?"
